The Legacy
by Miss Scarlett
Summary: My continuation of the events of the film. Lucilla flees to a Greek island following the final match, unaware that she is carrying a child - the lovely and mysterious Julia. Story now complete.
1. Prologue

Author's Note and Disclaimer: In writing this story I have done my best to thoroughly research any historical events and perso

**Author's Note and Disclaimer: **In writing this story I have done my best to thoroughly research any historical events and personages I have referred to, though there may still be errors and omissions (at this point I'd like to remind my readers and critics that the film itself was pretty lax in this department). 

***

In the hushed, darkened hallways of the Imperial Palace, the tension in the air was so thick that Lucilla's ladies-in-waiting could almost feel it brushing against their bare arms. Their silence was unbroken, save for occasional moans of dread.

News was reaching them, in snatches passed on as servants' gossip, that both the emperor and the gladiator they called Maximus had been killed in the great arena. Now their thoughts were exclusively of their mistress. Beautiful, strong Lady Lucilla had weathered many a storm in her young life, but now none of them knew what she would do. Some of the girls held hands, some looked at each other's pallid, drawn faces, all of them pondering this one question with a terrible fear in their hearts.

A noise at the other end of the building startled them momentarily, and their grips on one another's hands tightened as they listened to the footsteps drawing closer. All of them gasped when Senator Gaius, his face a picture of perfect horror, entered the bedchamber to confirm, finally, that everything they had heard was true. Two of them started to cry, but not for the hated Commodus. They wept for the great cause that General Maximus had brought with him to Rome so short a while ago, but also out of knowledge of how much he had meant to their dear mistress. All of them had sensed, in their years in her employ, all the love the lady had had to give, and had seen plainly that she barely had anyone to return it. Her husband had died far too soon, leaving an immeasurable void that no one but a lover could ever have filled. 

Was the General to have been that lover? Now they would never know.

The terrible tidings delivered, they waited anxiously for Lucilla to return to the palace. Hour after hour, she did not appear. Eventually, as dusk settled over the great city, they grew frantic. Then the senator returned, his withered face beaded with sweat and his voice tight with shock, bringing the announcement that the Princess was to reside no more inside the Imperial Palace. Instead, as she had been advised, she was to flee that very night.

Many tearful hugs and goodbyes later, the number of ladies to go with her was settled. Lucilla, daughter of Marcus Aurelius, sister of Commodus, was never to return to Rome again.

***

All around her, Lucilla heard voices…eerie, disembodied, alien sounds that would have frightened her beyond belief, had she not been terrified enough for one lifetime. In sleep – deep, uninterrupted sleep, the kind she had not enjoyed in years – she had hoped to escape the Hades that her world had become. But no such luck.

Each and every time she closed her eyes, she saw Maximus lying beneath her, his sweet face in the eternal repose of death. She felt his skin beneath her fingertips as she closed his eyes, heard the murmuring voices around her. The feeling of heaviness in her chest, and the profound dizziness that overcomes one's body upon the death of a loved one, when it seems to suspend operation for one brief, merciful moment before the full horror of the event sinks in.

Each and every time this happened, Lucilla would brace herself. Then she would wake. A nightmare, another nightmare, which had already come true.

Maximus, my Maximus, and my brother. They killed each other. Did they not think of me? Did I cross either of their minds even _once _as they prepared to slaughter one another? Did they not love me enough to think of what _I_ would feel? They couldn't have. And yet, she had chosen to forgive them both.

A cool, damp sensation settled over her forehead, and once more she was back to reality. Opening her eyes, some of her equilibrium was regained at the sight of the maid's face as she bathed Lucilla's forehead in scented water.

"Oh, Diana," she murmured, her voice crackled with tiredness. "Thank you. You are wonderful."

My mother taught me never to thank servants. _They are below us, my dear. It is the natural order of things; so do not waste your breath. _I will do it anyway. These girls are my saviours. Soon I will be dead. Without them I would be dead already.

"Do not thank me, my lady," Diana replied. "Do you feel better?"

"No. I am sick. I have been since before we arrived here."

Diana did not answer. Conversation is difficult when the most pressing subject is the one that will upset everyone. Instead, the girl rose and crossed the small and sparsely furnished room to the window, through which streamed bright, blisteringly hot sunlight. "This will be better, my lady."

Diana is good at hiding her feelings. This place could be her home, for all she seems to acknowledge that we are so far away from Rome now. She hides how she feels because of me. Because she thinks I will cry, or worse, if she says a thing about what has happened to us. 

"Diana?" Lucilla asked, quietly, but even so causing a burning pain in her dry throat. "Do you know where we are?"

The maid stood twisting a rag free of excess water above a bowl. Lucilla watched her face closely. Her lips parted as she prepared to speak, then promptly pressed tightly together as she thought the better of it.

"Please tell me where we are, dear."

I know where we are. I remember the journey clearly enough. I saw the land, the dust, the water. I know that this is Greece. This is where Commodus would put people away who displeased him. Now he is dead, and yet we are still here.

"An island, my lady." 

"Do you know when you will go home?"

"I will not go home, my lady, without you."

"Oh, Diana, do not call me that. I am no lady anymore." Through eyes stinging with heat and dust in the air, Lucilla looked around the room. At the misshapen lumps of wood which served as furniture; at the bare clay walls. Below her, she felt the cot that was her bed. No, she was anything but a noble lady anymore. Only a select, uncaring few Rome even knew where she had gone. No one would ever look for her, or even think to. 

Did she even want them to look for her?

Diana smiled, confusedly. "Pardon me?"

"Call me Lucilla. From now on." She watched as the girl frowned. "Just say it aloud, so I can hear it."

"…Lucilla."

She felt a small satisfaction. Diana was an awkward and anxiously submissive creature, and never in her life as a servant had she uttered one sentence to her mistress without adding "my lady" at the end. Not since the last time Lucilla had seen her husband had she so enjoyed hearing her own name spoken. As she grinned at the nervous girl before her, she felt the pain coursing through her whole body begin to subside a little. Just a little.

Six weeks on this interminable island, and only a tiny bit closer to communicating with Diana in the way she dearly wanted to. 

"About going home, dear."

The girl sat down on a low stool opposite the bed, as if the strain of speaking with a princess so freely was too much for her.

"Yes, my…Lucilla." Tension reverberated in her quiet, childish voice.

"Do not worry about going back without me. Do not worry about me at all. I am a non-entity now. You still have a life left to lead."

That night, when the heat intensified and hung in the air like a warm, wet blanket, Lucilla dreamt of Lucius. Her little boy, whom she would never see again, no doubt was waiting impatiently in Rome for his mother's return. Visions of all her family scuttled through her weary mind as she slipped in and out of coma-like slumber, particularly of her son. Hot, suppressed tears streamed down her face, as if some damaged inner dam had finally collapsed after so many years.

She saw her baby, not more than a year old, fretful in her arms on one of the few times she had been allowed to care for him herself. Noble ladies were always 'spared' this duty, but she had revelled in it. The scent of his hair and skin reached her nose and delighted her as if this were not a dream, when she accepted, reluctantly, that it was. Then he was a toddler, dressed as a miniature version of his father. Then growing, then growing some more, so fast, then gone.

Her father appeared, towering above her, and suddenly she was the child. Kneeling at his feet, she heard his voice, softly commanding respect and inspiring love in his small daughter. She felt his gentle kiss on the top of her head.

Finally, she felt imagined cool air gusting across her whole body, and a transient sense of comfort overwhelmed her after so long without. Something, somewhere, was telling her to be glad for the life and the love she had been granted. She saw Maximus; her lost one, in this fleeting glance into Elysium.

_You're home._

Yes, she had forgiven him. And she had forgiven Commodus, for all the evil he had done her, even that which she could never tell anyone of. She also thanked the gods for all the evil had _not _done her and her son. 

As morning approached, she felt her stomach begin to turn, and inwardly she glowed through her pain with a new strength. This was her last hope of happiness before her end. None of her ladies knew that she vomited in the morning, and none of them would find out yet that this new affliction was not a symptom of the illness that would eventually kill her. Save for Diana. Before the girl went home, her mistress had one last request for her.

The island was not merely unbearable for the pregnant princess, in the final days of her valiant and yet doomed life. Diana, former nursemaid to Master Lucius and now carer to his beloved mother, had survived some unbearable events in her twenty short years. Banishment to this place, removal from her friends and family and the life of relative splendour she had led in Rome – all of this she could tolerate. 

Then the night that Lucilla, the great lady she had served and loved for a fair fraction of her lifetime, told her she was dying, came around just to teach her a lesson.

The lady requested that she not tell any of the other girls. Diana knelt before the bed, letting the Princess cradle her head as she wept uncontrollably, begging her not to leave them.

"Oh, my darling." Such a small, weak voice was ironic coming from such a woman. "I will make sure you will never be alone. You are my chosen one."

Chosen one? That meant nothing, whatever it was. Diana had no friends to call her own save this angel. Returning to Rome meant nothing if it would not be with her.

"I have something to give you," Lucilla told her.

"What?"

"I'll tell you tomorrow."

She was cleaning the few ragged dresses shared between all of them in a nearby stream, still fighting back more tears and aching to be with the lady again, when Rufina, a fellow maid, came running out to tell Diana that she was needed. The clothes were immediately abandoned, left to languish in the water and the heat.

"I'm going to have a baby, my dear."

Pregnancy had always been a byword for social disgrace to Diana. The little she knew about the subject was more painful than she cared to think of. She merely stared, dumbstruck, as Lucilla smiled serenely. Her auburn hair, once shiny and constantly pinned up neatly in magnificent ornaments, now hung down her back, tangled and clammy with sweat. It didn't affect her beauty in the slightest.

"Do you have any questions?"

"Of course not," Diana answered automatically. She knew better than to question her mistress's honour or good intentions. The child's father, whomever he may be, had to be a good man of high birth. There was no question about it. But what could she possibly want her maid to do about it?

"I will still die," the lady continued, completely unfazed to be predicting her own demise, "but not before the child is born. When it is, you will go home, Diana. With my child. I am giving him to you, to take with you back to Rome."

The months passed curiously quickly. Diana watched her mistress like a hawk, caught in an insufferable mixture of emotions as she noticed the sudden improvements in her health. She began leaving her bed during the day for the first time since soon after their arrival on the island, when the sickness had come. The other ladies were rapturous.

"She is better! Look at her skin…and she is eating! Oh, I told you she would, didn't I? She always does."

Diana found herself hating Lucilla for this, but somewhat irrationally. Of course, she was making herself strong again for the baby. But on the other hand, only she knew that it was all temporary – when the baby came, she would be ill again, then leave them. Not to mention the baby, for her to raise. Diana had never been married and had never raised a child. She had cared for the boy Lucius, but not alone.

Lucilla's belly grew bigger and rounder, until one night, the air much cooler and the sky much darker, the pains began. The infant, a girl, took no time at all for the four maids, including Diana, to deliver. 

The Princess, a mother for the second and final time, fell asleep soon after the birth. She spoke to none of her excited attendants before they went to bathe the squalling baby, simply smiling at Diana, mouthing 'thank you', and turning over. Diana herself tried to keep her mind completely clear, fending off the moment when the realisation – that the baby would soon be hers – dawned on her.

A few moments later, she returned to Lucilla's bedchamber, the child in her unwilling arms. 

"Lucilla? Wake up and see your daughter. She's…beautiful…" For the first time, Diana gazed into the child's bright, flashing eyes and broad, infectious smile. Quickly, she crossed the room and knelt before the low bed, reaching out a hand to gently shake her mistress back to reality.

It took several minutes for her to realise that her mistress had joined her father, the emperor, General Maximus and those murdered senators in the hereafter. Leaning over her, crying suddenly and hysterically, Diana saw that she was smiling, her skin still flushed and perfect.

"Say goodbye to your mother, Julia," the girl sobbed bitterly, repeating the name the sweet lady herself had selected. "You'll never know another human being like her. None of us will."


	2. I

The Roman Empire had no clear-cut method of selecting a legitimate heir to the throne, should a ruler die childless. Therefore, in the days and weeks immediately following the death of the despised Commodus in the Colosseum, anarchy bubbled in the heart of the Senate, and in the homes of many powerful patricians and generals. Rome needed a ruler, or else the Empire would belong to the mob.

This was the greatest fear of the traditional hierarchy – these few affluent families who still liked to believe that Rome was theirs. The Senate's purported democracy was an embarrassing formality for these men and their sons, who for generations had held the fate of the most part of the civilised world in their hands. 

The remains of the insane young Emperor had been swiftly buried by a quick-thinking slave; it was all that could be done to prevent Commodus from being torn to pieces by his exultant enemies. The body of General Maximus, on the other hand, was buried in a splendid wooden box provided by some mystery benefactor. Mourned, it seemed, by most of Rome, making their slow way to his burial in a sullen procession.

In the meantime, the Senate had been happy to instate a Roman consul, Publius Helvius Pertinax, as the new Emperor. It was a dangerous position to fill, one so recently occupied by a notorious despot of the same title. The high-up citizens of Rome held their breaths, a select few rubbing their greedy hands together in anticipation of the fall of yet another ruler.

The heart's wish of Marcus Aurelius, as he chose Maximus to be Protector of Rome after his death, would have been laughed at in these times. The reign of his only son had brought to end the culmination of 84 years of relative stability which his father had striven, stoically and yet effectively, to achieve.

_There was a dream that was Rome. These were the wishes of Marcus Aurelius._

Prayers unheeded by cruel gods. It seemed that Maximus Decimus Meridius was gone just as quickly as he had arrived. The power-wielders of the Empire stood in silent concord, never again to mention the name of the great general. Marcus Aurelius's lowly chosen one, and a symbol of all that was passed and lost. 

Maximus was gone, but would never be forgotten. Particularly by those who would use his sweeping legacy as a tool to resurrect his lost cause.

***

As the opaqueness of night closed in around her, Diana tried to tell herself that she was not alone. 

_I will make sure you will never be alone._

__Remembered those words made her who body feel cold, save for her arms, warmed by the swaddled infant she clutched to her. The night air was mercifully balmy and cool simultaneously. The wooden cart carrying them to the outskirts of Rome was still warm from the sunny assault of the bygone day, and the gentleman driving them was jovial, even as he should have been irritated by Diana's lack of responses to his friendly enquiries.

She was far too busy just trying to _remember_, to even begin to enjoy all the possible comforts on offer

Nonetheless, the only thing she could even hazily recall of her flight back from Greece was Julia's almost constant wailing to be fed and cleaned. Days had bled into nights as Diana had gradually ceased to sleep, until finally, her mind had almost shut down. Not yet six months old, the child already seemed too loud, too strong and too demanding for her to have possibly been nestling, silent and contented, inside her sweet mother so short a while ago.

Diana's mental oblivion was merely an emotional salve. Her body felt as if every sense had been deactivated, save for her sense of hearing. Julia's cries were as acutely heard and keenly dreaded, as they had been in those first few days. Lady Lucilla, in dying, had all but taken her beloved handmaiden with her. 

Her well-meaning gift, this baby, had been the vinegar that revived the younger woman, half-gone, back to life. 

Back to life. Diana tried a half-smile, vaguely in the child's direction, her neck feeling like an ancient hinge in dire need of oil. Her face was incapable of sensation.

"We're almost there, Madam," the driver said, blithely happy, and seemingly unaware that she had been ignoring him for the best part of their long journey.

Julia slept soundly, her odd half-smile, neither a warning nor a reassurance to her guardian, unchanged as she dozed. Does not being alone mean being with any living creature that is connected to you in some way? Diana felt the old confusion that had always accompanied her dear Lucilla's teachings – and the intense disappointment that always came with never completely understanding her all-knowing mistress. 

She gripped the baby closer to her suddenly, pursing her lips and closing her eyes tightly, her frazzled nerves collapsing as they often did these days. Without warning, an image resurfaced in her mind of the last resting place of Lucilla, once Princess of Rome. Julia whimpered, stirring from her transient sleep.

Seeing his pretty passenger hunched over, apparently in pain, the driver pulled the horse before him to a swift halt. 

Feeling the stop, Diana jerked herself straight again, scorched sand and emptiness as piercingly clear in her mind as they had been that day. She squeezed the great lady's child gently with one hand, as if to reassure herself that Julia was still there. Attempting to disregard the driver as he made his way around to where she was seated, she bent over the baby again, whispering and cooing almost obsessively.

"Not a stone there to mark her…not one they provided, anyway," she babbled, almost inaudibly. "We gave her an honourable burial, one almost due a princess. I found some beautiful pebbles for the spot, and we prayed. We prayed for days. I hope you're listening to this. I hope this stays in your memory. Once you grow, I can never repeat these things." Her voice trembling as Julia closed her overlarge blue eyes, Diana allowed a stray tear to drop onto the child's cheek, before wiping it away.

"I know it's late, Madam," the driver said, after waiting a moment to allow mother and child to converse uninterrupted. "It may take another two or three days to get to a place where you may stay. Would you like some water?" Respectfully, he wiped the mouthpiece of the flask he held before offering it to her.

Diana shook her head, not making eye contact, startled by the pain which resulted. She rubbed the back of her aching neck. "I have plenty."

"Do you wish me to find some milk for your daughter?"

Diana felt her cheeks burn. It _had_ occurred to her that all onlookers on this open-air journey would see that she did not nurse Julia herself. Nevertheless, this man did not have to make it so apparent to her. "No, thank you," she rasped.

"Is there anything, anything at all, that you require?" the driver continued, gently persistent. "There are not many resources in these parts, but I will try to get you anything you want. I will do my best."

Raising her eyes, burning with tiredness, to the sky, Diana spoke silently to Lucilla.

So will I. I will do my best, though that may not be good enough.

***

Quintus sat at his desk, his head bent over his books, the lamplight around him so low as to hide the identity of the person who had just entered the room. That was the way he preferred it – complete solitude. As the swift footsteps of the stranger ceased, however, the other man stiffened, recognising the familiar movements of his pestering manservant. More bad news, no doubt.

"Yes?" he said, his voice low, not bothering to turn his head.

"There is news from the Senate, sir. The new Emperor has been sworn in."

Quintus was silent for a long moment. When he answered, his voice was low and weary. "So soon."

"Yes, sir. The senators realised that they could wait no longer. Many men have made very valid claims to the throne in recent days. There has been near chaos."

"Really. How do we know that they are not all just impetuous fools?"

Not grasping what his master meant, Didius fumbled for an answer. "The last thing we all need is a civil war, sir."

Quintus sighed, lifting a bundle of papers and holding them up to the dimmed yellow light, squinting to read the words. Mulling over the mistakes of others, past and present, was the only way he knew how to forget his own. The events at the Senate and around the wealthy, power-consumed regions of Rome – all the disorder and rivalry, the panic and uncertainty – had little or nothing to do with him anymore. The thought made him burn with envy for the ones these things _did_ concern.

"This new emperor. Do you know where he comes from?"

"I do not, sir." Didius was taken aback suddenly by the jaded irritation in his master's eyes as he turned to look at him, kindling like an old fire set slowly alight once more. "Do you wish me to find out for you?"

Quintus made a non-committal gesture at the younger man. He didn't care in the slightest whom the latest no-count lamb to the slaughter was. His thirst for information was purely selfish – he needed desperately to know, though his pride would not allow him to admit it, that there were men who had made more foolish choices than he had.

Didius lingered in the doorway, his brow furrowed as if he were considering something.

"Well? What else?" Quintus asked testily.

The manservant's mouth curved into a smile he had obviously been fighting to conceal. "There is a rumour that might interest some people, come from Greece…a silly handmaiden brought it back from some little jaunt. It concerns the Lady Lucilla."

Quintus had all but stopped listening at the detail that a female was the origin of the little snippet. His heart then thumped at the mention of Lucilla, and his chin actually fell. He tried to quash the interest evident in his voice. 

"Tell me."

"Well, it is basically a rumour, but it could well be fairly substantiated. Some boys went back to the island and found no living soul remaining there, you see."

His master sniffed with impatience. "What does it mean?"

"They say she has perished, sir."

Thoughts and memories tore so fast through Quintus's mind that he could hardly put them in order. Among all his most pertinent recollections of his past career, hers was the only feminine face he could remember in any scene. All his life, all women had meant nothing to him, bar her. 

The last time he had seen her, she had been stood before him, brave, upright, and so starkly beautiful and intelligent that she defied description or definition. She was as no human being he had ever known – or, as he believed, had ever lived. 

She had been dying then, far below the surface of her lovely skin, which was greying and beginning to show some of the pain underneath. Put away that night, so as to hide the consequences of the catastrophic reign of her brother. He had known, and he had done nothing. Now dead, and buried in obscure Grecian sand, that splendid woman nothing more than a spectacle for gossiping peasants.

"It is not a rumour," he said simply.

"Pardon me, sir?"

"…Nothing. Is that all?" He rose from his desk with difficulty, numb and unthinking, a vision of her fine head and determined expression branded onto his brain like an engraving in gleaming brass. 

"No, sir." Didius took a breath, revelling in his position as messenger. "They also say that while away, she bore an illegitimate child, which lived and was taken from the island. Supposedly, it resides within these city walls as we speak."


	3. II

Diana was eternally grateful to the whims of fate for placing her in the care of the Lady Lucilla

Diana was eternally grateful to the whims of fate for placing her in the household of the Lady Lucilla. Somehow, though she had loathed being reduced from the rank of a patrician's treasured daughter to the level of a servant, she soon came to feel as though it were _she _being cared for by the Princess, and not vice versa.

Lucilla was unlike any royal lady Diana had met in her pampered life. Her purpose in life seemed more than to set an example for her inferiors, but to see to their welfare personally. She had been a legendarily good mother to Lucius, and as a result, the complete lack of petulance in the boy had at one time been the talk of the land. When someone she loved or felt responsible for – this included her ladies in waiting – was hurt, physically or emotionally, she felt their pain with them, and did everything she humanly could to relieve it.

Her own life had rarely been comfortable and had never been easy, but the optimism and consolation Lucilla brought to those around her made her the most beloved woman in the whole of the Empire, and the one who would never be forgotten. Instead she would be canonised, along with General Maximus, in the imaginations of the people of Rome for many generations to come.

Quintus, therefore, was not the only person to feel the loss of the Princess so keenly. He was, however, the only man as yet to form a design on that which she had supposedly left behind.

***

The people of Rome, as they went about their early-morning business, were kind to the lone young woman and her child as she trod the crowded streets, following detailed directions given by the kind driver of the cart who had made the journey with them. These parts of the city were not so squalid or uncivilised as she had once been led to believe. Raising her head to see above the heads of the figures all around her, she saw the grey-bricked building the driver had told her to seek out. As if to give her approval, Julia gurgled, reclining in her arms.

Diana smiled down at the baby and quickened her pace, desperate to be indoors where she could gather her thoughts and decide what to do next. True to her unspoken word, Lucilla had cared for her "chosen one" to the end: Diana had, sewn into the lining of her heavy tunica, more money than she had ever guessed existed – an unsolicited gift from her mistress. She and Julia should have been made more than comfortable, but the former handmaiden, educated thoroughly by the Princess of Rome, was thrifty for the moment.

The apartment she shortly found herself in would serve for the time being: a single room, furnished modestly, with a low but sturdy bed for Diana and a cradle for Julia. Supplies would be needed, and many of them. Diana was scared by the thought, though definitely not for want of finances. She had never bought anything for herself or anyone else in her life. The choice of a communal dwelling rather than an isolated house had not, consequently, been accidental. Her planned tactic for survival was to observe others, discreetly, and then to imitate them.

This was where fate had brought her. Her third life in twenty-one years, yet this latest would be infinitely more complicated and trying than that of a political pawn or a servant had been.

Julia took to her new home much more quickly than her new mother did. 

In her cradle, cosseted in the small selection of makeshift coverings Diana had thought to bring with her, the normally jittery child made short work of falling asleep. 

Diana removed her clothes, which by now were sticking to her skin with nervous sweat. She did not even notice how hungry she was, so familiar had the feeling become in recent days. After giving Julia her milk and seeing to the baby's every comfort, she often and easily forgot her own needs. She lay down on the bed, finally resting and luxuriating in silence and comfort.

Hours passed as she attempted to relax fully, her mind blank, only slightly cheered by the quiet noises Julia made in her untroubled slumber. The air cooled, and Diana slid beneath a thin, scratchy blanket, tempted to cover up her head, but thinking the better of it in case Julia should cry.

Sleep came eventually, just as soon as her nerves – left on edge by the baby's constant demands – saw fit to calm. In the morning, the last thing Diana would remember seeing in her prolonged wakefulness was the dark azure blue spilling in from the perfect Roman night outside, embracing and beautifying her meagre surroundings like a welcome home gift. 

In her blurry dreams, she thought she saw Lucilla, and her heart soared with pleasure. The room around her was suddenly not a paltry rented apartment, but the lady's magnificent chamber of state, rich and golden like a shrine to her great goodness and beauty. Diana strained to see the figure walking towards her from across the grandly elongated room, wanting fiercely to see the fallen lady one more time.

But no. The woman was too short and sturdy, her step too languid and her complexion much too dark to be that of Lucilla. Diana felt a great part of herself, momentarily revived by thoughts of her mistress, lying dormant once more.

"Diana, you shame us," said the woman sternly, still walking.

The voice was like a dagger to her, and she could barely fathom why, until she recognised her mother's face. Thin, drawn and constantly frowning grimly, making her children feel guilty was the only way she had known how to control them. 

Slowly, Diana's gaze fell to the other woman's stomach as they both stood still, which was full and round. Her mother was pregnant, quite heavily so.

"Mother…" she began.

Then, the overwhelming, sickening stench of blood came to her nostrils suddenly as torrents of gore began to pour from beneath her mother's skirts. Her belly was deflating, and as it did, she looked down at the shocking spectacle with a look of pure…surprise.

"Oh, Diana," said the vision unhurriedly, standing sedately in a pool of her own life force. "What have you done to us now?"

Diana merely gaped, moaning in horror, and then screamed. Or thought she did. Her instinct was to run away, but she seemed paralysed, staring at the blood and perversely fascinated. She waited to see the dead baby float out from beneath its mother, but it did not. Some repressed memory had been triggered, something frightening and repugnant to her, which for the moment was lost.

When she woke, seconds later, her pillow was soaked with tears. Despite the terror of her nightmare, however, she felt oddly rested and comfortable. Turning over automatically to check on Julia, she breathed a sigh of relief as she saw the baby, still bound up in her blankets and sleeping.

"That's the quietest the little monster's ever been in her life," she said to herself, absently. 

Then it came to her.

The games – the stuff of her teenage nightmares. Emperor Commodus, whom she had thankfully directly encountered only once or twice during his reign, parading those people out to kill one another for sport. Most of her contemporaries had thought it good, even necessary for national unity, to display and observe such things.

She had thought it barbaric. Death, the sound of metal crashing upon metal, cries of pain, the roar of the unscrupulous crowd's cheers. The blood. It was a mystery to her, even now, what putrid recesses of human nature would dream up, let alone implement, such horrid concepts. It was just one of the reasons she had despised her family so much. 

There were, however, other reasons for her hatred. Other memories, buried like the dead, such as those which caused her, at this moment, to try and forget the image of her mother that she had just revisited.

In all her life to come, Diana knew that rose petals would disgust her, and all because of the part they had played in that horrifying final display.

Rubbing her eyes, and rising sluggishly from her bed, Diana walked the short distance to Julia's cradle, gathering up the resting girl in her arms and rocking her gently, scrutinising her face and the wispy thatch of corn-coloured hair on her tiny head. 

In that second, the first traces of gratitude for Lucilla's beautiful legacy manifested themselves. Lying back down, Diana placed Julia next to her and held her close, breathing in her sweet smell, trying to detect the Princess of Rome somewhere in her daughter's aroma. 

The link her subconscious had tried to make between childbirth and tragedy seemed obvious to Diana, even in her drowsy mental state. Julia's face beside her own, she was gradually overcome by some oppressed maternal love for the child in Lucilla's eternal absence. 

"You," she whispered, "were probably the only good thing, besides your mother, ever to come out of that travesty of a royal bloodline. I wish you could stay tiny forever so that I might never cease talking to you this way."

Diana's attention was caught at that moment by such close inspection of her charge. In all the time that had passed since Lucilla's death, barely a moment had been spared for Diana to give her attention exclusively to Julia. She narrowed her eyes, staring into the tiny sleeping face again, fundamental questions forming in her mind. Golden hair and heartrending smile from her mother. Eyes, not Lucilla's – presumably Julia's anonymous father. Who could he have been?

"I never asked her," Diana thought, eyes filling with tears again, clouding the semi-darkness around her.

***

Lucilla and Maximus's aborted affair had not, mercifully, been common knowledge among Rome's citizens. It had, however, burgeoned on the lips of the wives of the capital's highest senators, bored to distraction by their narrow lives. Many men in higher places had subsequently gotten wind of the rumour meant to blacken these people's reputations, but whenever they had, they paid it little heed. The lady was a widow, and a silent though much-loved pillar of the ruling elites. If she were married, still of childbearing age as she had been, there would have been much more cause for concern – the shaky line of succession could simply not afford to be placed in further jeopardy. This was the reason such harsh penalties were imposed upon female adulterers of royal and noble families. As it was, everyone knew that Lady Lucilla abided by only the most upright moral code. She and the General Maximus could certainly never marry, but should they choose to fall in love, most people had far too much love and respect for both of them to interfere or pass judgement upon them. 

Then, however, there were those people whose whole livelihoods depended upon every movement in the high places of the Empire. When these people were not desperately working to improve their own position in this great and complex hierarchy, in which family and birthright meant everything, they were usually frustrated and malevolently disdainful towards those who were handed their power on a plate by their affluent fathers. 

One such creature was Quintus. The mere second son of an _equite_ – a man of property, slightly less powerful than a patrician – he had lived for seventeen excruciatingly uncertain years in the shadow of his brother Marcellus. Marcellus was the unquestioned favourite, having inherited their mother's fine bone structure and full, handsome face, along with their father's prodigious intelligence and ruthlessness in a political world which, were in not for his tireless efforts, may well have refused to ever accept them. 

Their family were not one of the ancient bloodlines that had dominated the social and political elites for centuries, but their attempts to join this upper crust soon became legendary. As a child, always pushed into dark corners while Marcellus was praised for his fledgling achievements in their father's footsteps, Quintus had practically been relegated to the status of a daughter. Yet at the same time, he was denied even the status of his four younger sisters, who (all but one) were married before they turned fourteen to three brothers, all sons of a hideously wealthy patrician. 

The company of his one maiden sister, aged ten, was both a blessing and a curse to Quintus in his despair. She had been brain damaged at birth, and her brother spent the whole of her short life trying half-heartedly to make stimulating conversation with her, to engage what intellect she had, just to form the basis of some meaningful companionship between them. He never achieved his goal. No number of expensive physicians could do anything to help young Maria, and she died before her eleventh birthday a few months later.

The power of Quintus's grief surprised him, and then disgusted him. His pride would not allow him to admit that in his whole life, the only friendship he had even come close to having had been with a mentally handicapped girl. It was terrible of him to think such things of his poor sister, his mother had yelled, tears streaming down her face, while beating him for his insolence. Maria had been the one of her babies she thought she would never have to give up. Now, it seemed, she was stranded in their great estates with only Quintus, who enraged her.

Marcellus, meanwhile, married a woman of direct royal descent, practically a cousin of Marcus Aurelius. Then, just before Quintus turned eighteen with still no career prospects of his own beside army duty, his brother was hit by a stray arrow on a hunting expedition at which his father and two of his uncles were present. He was killed outright, aged twenty, with a glittering and hard-earned future in politics wasted and a young bride set to inherit almost everything he left behind.

If Marcellus had not married, all of his property would have gone straight to Quintus. All that was now left to be passed down was their father's ambition for one of his sons, just one, to succeed in Roman politics.

It was all of these things which had formed the basis of Quintus's contempt for the opposite sex: jealously of three of his sisters, more successful than he; irrational anger at Maria for dying and leaving him in such grotesque loneliness; hatred of his mother for hating him; and rage at his sister-in-law for marrying Marcellus and becoming his heir.

Thus, he could never look at a woman without a combination of scorn and condescension to her undoubtedly high rank. High-ranking, ridiculously empowered women were virtually the only kind he had met in his recent life.

Until Lucilla. Now, with her death and the news of the possible existence of an unclaimed child, he was finally faced with a real opportunity to redeem his father's position and render unjust all the man's lowest opinions of his youngest son. The thought made him boil with long-held anger, and then a rare glimmer of happiness with this new possibility. 

Lucilla was splendid, but the infant, being hers, was not enough. Her son Lucius remained in Rome, his guardians consolidating his claim to power. Having located it, for the child to be valuable to revolutionaries in Rome, Quintus would have to find evidence that it was also the offspring of the General Maximus.


	4. III

The unrest in Rome grew quiet over the next four years, and Quintus grew increasingly bored, and quietly ambitious

The unrest in Rome grew quiet over the next four years, and with it grew Quintus's boredom and frustration. The agitation and uncertainty that always accompanied a grapple for power in the capital was no longer there to thrill him. The previous twelve months had brought a new emperor to the throne – Lucius Septimus Severus – and with his ruthless regime, the advent of something like stability in the troubled Empire. 

The former second-in-command to General Maximus and head of Commodus's Praetorian Guard feared that this tranquillity would soon drive him insane. He craved intrigue…and the chance to claim back some of the status he had lost. His ambition was quiet – yet forever increasing.

The only recent instance of drama had been with the assassination of the bungling Pertinax – as predicted three years before by powerful Roman cynics. Quintus could not deny, even to himself, how much he relished the idea of seeking revenge, as the new ruler had done, for another's death. Occupying his family's rural estate, inhabited now only by himself, afforded much spare time for dreaming – of a time when he might regain some authority. 

He had so far received no opportunity to follow up on the rumour of the orphaned daughter of the Lady Lucilla. The notion of it had lain dormant in the back of his mind, awaiting the proper moment when he should act on it. The fantastical nature of the tale of the fallen princess's absconding to Greece, giving birth and then dying a legend, had lost a great deal of its gloss and credibility with the passage of time. Above all, Quintus had feared the loss of his reputation should he attempt to retrieve this child, then discover that she had never even existed.

Now his interest was reviving, as he sought a new scheme to wile away uneventful days and resume his decelerating career.

Desperately needing another human being with which to share his clandestine plots for social climbing, he began lecturing his manservant Didius on many subjects of varying importance. Among them, his pride at having led armies into battle alongside the formidable General Maximus (for whom, against his own nature, he grieved for greatly), his experience serving the odious Emperor Commodus, and his yearnings, once more, for another taste of power.

The one thing he had not shared with Didius was his 'knowledge' of Lucilla's progeny. This he now shared for his sporadic meetings with a few old friends, whom he hoped he could manipulate into paving his way back into the hierarchy. He suspected that his information could be most valuable to them indeed.

***

The sweet scent of wheat and grass, carried swiftly up by a gust of cool wind, filled Diana's nostrils. Sighing with pleasure and gratitude, she stared out at the vast field, unlike any she had ever seen in her short, sheltered life. The land, spotted with enormous hills as far as the eye could see, and seemed to resound beauty in a strange, silent voice. Forests thick with trees, laden heavily with fruit, could be seen to her right and left. There was not one human being in the area beside herself, yet she felt like she had never been in the presence of so much life as she was now.

The moment prolonged itself, leaving Diana standing, blissfully contented.

Then all of a sudden, she was disconcerted and mystified as she caught the strong, acrid smell of smoke. Her ears strained automatically to hear some noise by way of explanation, and were met by the sound of a horse approaching alarmingly fast from far off in the apparently immeasurable distance. She felt her heart pounding painfully and her knees buckling in fear.

At that moment, she was jolted awake from a potentially disturbing reverie, and found herself immediately trying to retain the sights and sensations from that dreamlike field. 

She gripped the thin, worn fabric of the bedclothes around her in a puerile attempt to discard the realities of her own life, to carry on dreaming. The day was hot – she had probably fallen asleep in the middle of the day, exhausted. Her skin felt moist and warm, and she was so hungry that the rumbling in her stomach actually hurt, her body begging to be fed and fuelled in order to face the remainder of her daily duties.

The dream was relocated to the back of her mind with the rest, her life currently teeming with more pertinent concerns.

Her eyes tightly closed, she did not see Julia's small, plump form approaching her on shuffling feet. "Mama?"

Diana reached out a hand lazily, feeling the child's silken, curling hair. "I'll feed you in a moment, baby. I'm very tired. Find a piece of bread in the meantime."

Julia snorted with impatience and ignored her mother's pleas, instead climbing onto the bed and pulling her sturdy little body up to Diana's, forcing herself into her arms with all a child's possessiveness. Feeling the little girl's breath on her face, Diana smiled, inwardly thanking the gods, as she did almost every day, for their mercy in making her experiences as a parent much less horrific than they might have been. These recent years had somehow had stretched by like millennia, yet she knew that had it not been for some benevolent higher power, she would probably have not survived them at all. 

Since infancy, Julia had apparently detected these prolonged attacks of weariness that haunted Diana's days and all but destroyed her domestic capabilities – the maladies that often left her in a zombie-like state for days, able to fulfil her duties as mother and housekeeper only through pure instinct, and totally without physical strength.

Not that she was ungrateful for Julia's presence in her life. As a baby and toddler, she had been so constantly demanding that Diana had feared she would not have the tenacity to see Lucilla's daughter grow. In other words, that she would fail in carrying out her sworn promise to the late Princess. 

The first year had been unbearable, the former handmaiden only just enduring thanks to the compassion of others. Her first time buying commodities at market had been a nightmare, until a kind man on a crutch had gently taken her basket from her, ordered Julia to be quiet, softly asked her what it was she required, and selected the things for her himself.

She would have gladly reciprocated the numerous good deeds done her over the long months and years – but Rome, even this small section of the great city, was such a vast and heavily populated place that most of those sympathetic faces would remain forever anonymous to her. In all the time she had lived here, she had barely had enough time alone and unoccupied to think and acknowledge how lonely she had gradually become. Thankfully, the little lady in her care was an endless source of fascination, and a vivid and comforting relic of her dear, lost mother. 

Her only 'mama' now was Diana, yet she did not seem to suffer for it, even as Diana's shortcomings as a parent were anything but lost on either of them. Just as Julia sensed and responded thoughtfully to her guardian's attacks of fatigue, she seemed to recognise Diana's anxiousness to please and adequately fulfil her role. The little girl dutifully ate every meal placed in front of her, however unappetising. She went to bed when told, even if she did not sleep for hours. Instead she would lie awake, plaiting the hair of the few rag dolls she had to play with, and listening to her mother tossing and turning at the other end of the room.

Sometimes she would curl up beside Diana, as she did now, knowing that her closeness always seemed to calm her down. The room smelt of the bread they had eaten for breakfast with fresh milk bought that morning. That, and the sweat making Diana's skin stick to the bed, as heat poured over them through the one window supplying light and ventilation to the small apartment. 

Julia had heard her mother murmuring in her sleep again, and though it troubled her, she did not ask her about it. Whenever _she_ had bad dreams, Diana always told her not to worry, as they were harmless figments of her imagination, and nothing to worry about. These dreams, however, seemed to be worrying her mama a great deal.

"Baby," Diana muttered, beginning to wake up fully, "fetch me a rag, from that bowl of water in the corner, will you?"

Not saying a word, Julia clambered down from the bed, pulling her thick, lengthening hair from around her neck as her tiny feet touched the bare floor. She fetched the cloth quickly, hurrying back to Diana and climbing back onto the bed beside her. Diana took the cloth from the girl's hands and began rubbing it over her face. The water, kept cool in the one shady corner of the room, revived her considerably. Never forgetting her duties, she began thinking about making Julia's favourite broth for her lunch.

"No, Mama, let me do it," the child piped up as she watched her bathe her face, and took the cloth back. Gently Julia started sponging away the perspiration from Diana's skin, as if knowing the areas that were causing her the most discomfort.

Whispering a 'thank you', Diana felt some emotion, some memory, triggered somewhere deep in her mind and her gut. For a moment, she scoured her most precious recollections to see which one matched this moment of contact with Lucilla's daughter. Then a lump sprang spontaneously up in her throat as she remembered the dying lady, the island, and the terrible months preceding Julia's birth.

Poring over market stalls, listless and longing to be back in her bed, Diana was oblivious to the blatant attempts of a local man to catch her eye. Had she known that he was staring, she would have believed that he was looking past her or at someone else; someone much more desirable than she. Her tunica had been worn a thousand times, and her uncombed hair was merely scraped back with a wooden pin. 

Most of her money, earned by assisting her kindly neighbours in her spare time, was spent either on food or on clothes, toys and other luxuries for Julia. She seldom bought anything for herself, and was certainly not out to impress any gentlemen traders this afternoon.

The air was cooling as the sun receded for the evening, yet Diana had become so desensitised by lack of rest that she only noticed when Julia removed her linen hood, letting her abundance of curling golden hair down her back. She hated the sun, although her skin was faintly olive, in contrast with her overall fairness, and more than capable of coping with even harsh light. 

Walking beside Diana, she silently refused to hold her mother's hand, but despite her surprising pride, remained clinging onto a handful of Diana's skirt. Her back poker straight as she stood tall in the crowded marketplace, the child seemed, eerily, almost aware of the royal bloodline which had produced her.

Somewhat mechanically collecting an assortment of vegetables from a stall, Diana stole a lingering glance at Julia as the small girl smiled at the vendor serving them, politely playing up to his teasing salutations. As he handed her a segment of fresh orange to eat, she handled it in a ladylike manner definitely too precocious for a child her age, raising it to her lips while being careful not to spill juice on her clothes. Noticing her mother's stare, she raised enormous green-gold eyes to Diana's and smiled.

"I think my mama would like some too," she quipped to the vendor.

"Oh, no thank you, sir," Diana told the gentleman as he promptly offered her a piece. "Say thank you to the kind man, Julia."

"I did, Mama. I know I should never be rude." 

Diana watched her as she ambled slowly towards the next stall they visited every day, confident despite the throngs of people more than twice her size all around her. Already, her heart fell at seeing Julia's palpable heritage manifesting itself as she grew into a luminously beautiful, endlessly engaging, prodigiously intelligent and strangely compassionate young girl. Her movements and deportment were clearly written in the cells handed down from mother to daughter, yet Diana's curiosity did not end with the child's cherished maternity.

Moving swiftly after Julia, she watched intently as Lucilla's living bequest to her made her own way through the area. Both with their eyes on something – Julia her orange, Diana her responsibility – neither noticed at first a fight which had broken out seconds ago between two young local men in the street ahead of them. While some illusive quarrel drove them to attack one another viciously, other townspeople began gathering to witness the scene.

Frightened, Diana hurried through the horde to where Julia had ended up, very near to the fracas. Before she began leading her away, however, Diana noticed how still Julia was standing, fascinated by the display of violence before her. The remains of the fruit she had been eating had fallen from her hands, and juice stained her chin where before she had not allowed it to. Her mouth hung open, as she stood frozen.

Taking her arm, mildly disgusted, Diana pulled Julia away as a small smile had formed upon the child's lips.

"You should not be seeing such things at your age," Diana muttered. "Nay, you should _never _witness such things. I really should stop bringing you out here. So many things a little girl could see which she must not. Terrible."

Diana never noticed how old she sounded; chastising Julia for allowing her innocent four-year-old eyes to wander. But the look in those eyes as she had seen the boys fight had scared her. Casting it from her mind quickly, she led the docile girl back home.

From his stall, which mother and child had passed moments before, Antoninus watched closely the intriguing and pretty young woman on her stumbling way, and smiled.


	5. IV

Diana could not quash her anger as they made their way back to the apartment that evening, dusk gradually falling over Rome

Diana could not quash her anger as they made their way back to the apartment that evening, as dusk gradually fell over the somnolent face of Rome. Aside from feeling tired enough to fall asleep on her feet, the spectacle they had witnessed earlier that evening hadn't just filled her with a mother's concern for Julia's moral welfare, should they continue to live in this section of the city. It had also inspired in her a strange foreboding about the future.

She did not believe in premonitions. Her father, immovably practical, had made certain to stamp out early all superstitions from his children's minds. Her fairly slow-witted mother had simply been made uncomfortable by such talk. Diana's vivid girlhood dreams, and terrifying nightmares, had always been brushed aside. Such training had been entirely beneficial when she had been a servant – young girls were expected to be silly and small-minded when displaying themselves before Imperial royalty.

Now that she had these responsibilities, however, it seemed to limit her effectiveness as a parent, because Julia was clearly no ordinary little girl.

Walking behind Diana as she opened their apartment door, she carried a basket full of vegetables almost the same size as she was with apparent ease. Her surprising strength was plainly not limited to her developing mind.

"Is that not too heavy for you, darling?" Diana enquired, tilting her head quizzically at the small girl.

Julia shook her head, lifting the basket up to her shoulders as if mocking its attempt to slow her down. "I'm alright. Did you see that man looking at us in the market?"

Diana carried her own burden cumbersomely inside the door, where she dropped it, and beckoned for Julia to follow her. Across the room beside their twin beds, she lit an oil lamp. "I did not. A lot of people stare at us in the street, baby. As long as they don't try to harm us, there's nothing wrong with it."

"I know that, but it is terribly nosy of them."

Diana smiled, stroking the clever girl's shining fair hair, even more beautiful than Lucilla's had been. Her loveliness always left a lump in her throat.

"Why do they stare, Mama?"

Quickly going over her carefully prepared story, Diana bit her lip, preparing to lie. "Because we live here on our own, precious. Not many ladies live on their own with their children, you know."

"Is it because I don't have a father?" Julia said, without sounding the least bit upset. "The other children all have fathers."

"You have a father as well," Diana said quickly. "But he died, before you were born. I'll tell you more about him when you're a little older. I'm sorry I haven't told you anything about that before."

"It's alright." Julia put down her basket and began putting some of the vegetables down ready to be cut. "I know people are bad to ask too many questions. Antoninus isn't bad, though. He talks to me sometimes when we're at market."

Diana, absently, was caught off guard by the strange name. Antoninus – grand, important. It reminded her, distantly, of something she had heard before. It was definitely entirely out of place in these parts of the city. 

It took several seconds for her to realise the true implications of what Julia was saying.

"Strangers talk to you at market, do they?"

Julia nodded, holding a fresh apple to her button nose to smell it. Her cheeks were rosy with contentment – or excitement. "Yes. Only I don't think he counts as a stranger, Mama, because we know him. He sells pottery and baskets, lots of them."

"Well…have I spoken to him?"

"Yes! He's the nice man with the beard who always tries to talk to you. When you ignore him he just asks me about you."

Diana felt her cheeks burn and her heart sink. No wonder they were gossiped about so much; she had made them unpopular by being so very impolite.

"Oh, how terrible of me," she lamented out loud. She sat down on her bed, her head feeling light with fatigue and mortification. "I will try harder, Julia. We will have friends."

"That's good, Mama." Julia smiled and sat beside her, leaning her head on Diana's shoulder. "I think Antoninus will forgive you, though. He likes you very much."

Long after Julia snored sweetly beneath her blankets, Diana stayed awake, feeling as though she had forgotten something. She suddenly felt very strange, though not in an altogether unpleasant way. The invisible ball and chain around her ankle was becoming lighter with each passing second. She no longer wished to sleep constantly. Deep in her being, she felt more alive than she ever had. More vivacious, more loved, even than when she had been the treasure of her family. 

Rolling over on her bed, which almost felt softer, she looked closely at Julia's lovely face, and felt so full of love for her, the sensation was almost frightening. She looked around their little home, and saw everything they had: comfort, safety, all the necessities and luxuries they needed. Finally, Diana admitted to herself that she had never known such contentment.

She was finally forgetting her disgrace – that time in her life she had never spoken of to another human being and never would. It was in the past. The bad chapter of her life was closing; truly it had been ever since she had become Lucilla's unwilling foundling at the age of fourteen, when the wounds of her dishonour were still open and painful, feeling as though they would never heal.

Sitting up, she reached over to the chest across the room, containing the few items she had brought back with her from Greece. It was only the second time she had uncovered them in almost five years, such a bittersweet relic had they been. A few gold coins, unspent, lucky charms from the good Princess, destined to stay there forever. A torn shawl and worn linen dress. A baby blanket of Julia's. 

Then, Diana's throat caught painfully at the sight of a splendid golden jewellery box with an illustrious and poignant history. A gift to Lucilla from her husband on their wedding day. Still containing all her jewels, taken off, in spite of her ladies' pleas, when they were banished to the island and she no longer considered herself a princess.

Tentatively, Diana opened the box, hearing its old hinges creak. Lifting a heavy jewelled collar from within, instinctively she held onto it very tightly. Its coldness sent an unwelcome chill through her, yet she barely noticed. Every piece of shining metal, every precious stone, was marked with Lucilla. She was not lost. Diana smiled, feeling some resolution, at last, in her aimless life. For a long time she had tried to hold on to every tiny memory she had, as if she were losing the lady all over again. Now she realised that that, as long as she had these things, there was no need.

Reluctantly putting the necklace away, she closed the box and put it safely away again. 

The bundle of stiff papers inside it, wrapped in cloth and buried deep beneath the numerous other treasures, had gone unnoticed, not to be discovered for many years to come.

***

Quintus was considering abandoning his carefully laid plans for a second time. His years of absence from the workings of the Roman political system and blunted his recollection of what a cynical system it could be. He and Crispinus, the jaded and self-important son of a rising patrician, had spoken many, many times of how they may exploit the fragile make-up of the rule of the Empire, and had grown to despise each other more and more through the flimsy veneer of their 'friendship'.

The bottle of wine on the table between them steadily disappearing, Crispinus's anecdotes became gradually more outrageous and hyperbolic. Quintus, on the other hand, measured his disclosures carefully, choosing the exact moment when he wished to tell his rival, whose powerful relatives might just come to be useful, what he planned soon to do.

"And then I suppose my father will be executed," Crispinus slurred, ending his latest prediction for his father's flourishing career. "Sometimes, he is so close to committing high treason that I fear terribly for our ruin."

He was almost twenty-one, but his overbearing enthusiasm at being the master of all that was his father's in the man's absence gave him the air of an extremely spoiled child. He was not handsome, yet he collected loose women by the houseful. Everything about him was too loud – his clothes, his voice, his presence. Watching him with increasing distaste, Quintus fleetingly saw something of his late brother, and cringed.

"But not your father's life?" Quintus said, smiling wryly, his stomach turning again at his companion's brashness, which did not end when he became sober.

Crispinus sneered. "It is a woman's station to grieve for such trifling commodities as a life. You must know by now, Quintus, that a man should fear for nothing but much greater things. Such as property. Status. Pride."

Quintus nodded slowly. "I heartily agree. The terrible transience of such things makes them of the uppermost importance."

"Transience?"

"Once I was second in command to the greatest Roman general who ever lived," Quintus explained, his voice quietened partly by anger, partly by intense bitterness. "Now what am I?"

"A man who will no doubt regain his affluence with time," Crispinus replied charitably, though at the same time avoiding the other man's cold gaze.

Quintus rose and turned towards the row of statues and busts gracing the wall behind him. Faces of an unmistakeable, however tainted, lineage, stared back at him grandly. Repressing a surge of jealousy, he turned back to Crispinus.

"I see why you worry so that your father will be ruined. It would be a terrible shame to see so much fine marble go to waste."

This slight on his family's property made Crispinus flinch. He quickly took a gulp of wine, regaining his composure. "And if you were ruined, Quintus – for there is no other family to do it for you – naught would be wasted, would it?"

Quintus seated himself once more, in no mood for battle. Or to lose Crispinus's comradeship. "True, my friend." He took up his own drink, but took only a small sip; not enough to rob him of his senses. "But let us not argue. I came here to tell you something in particular; something I trust you'll be interested to hear."

Crispinus swore he could feel his ears pricking up. Quintus's revelations bored him at the best of times, not least the ones he felt to be so important as to require his unwelcome presence at this fine villa. Any news, however, was good news in these tedious times, almost completely bereft of intrigue.

"Very well, Quintus," he said flatly. "Excite me."

"My man Didius has a lover, a girl from the royal household of the late Lady Lucilla. A charming creature, much too intelligent for her own good."

Crispinus sniffed.

"When the princess died, this girl brought back with her from exile in Greece some very interesting information, which I hope to be able to implement. It concerned not only the lady, but something very valuable she supposedly left behind."

Quintus stopped abruptly, watching Crispinus's expression closely. Before the other man's face could change, however, he blurted out, "You trust that gossip relayed by a handmaiden to a manservant she sleeps with to be the truth? Why, man, you will get yourself ostracised completely with such talk!"

His companion shook his head sedately, as if he had fully expected just such a response. "I assure you, this tale is much too elaborate to have been imagined by a woman. My servant is no fool, despite the impression he may give sometimes. He has been unfailingly loyal to me these ten years."

Crispinus started to laugh quietly, flecks of wine shooting out of his mouth. "Quintus, this is too ridiculous. I was as much in love with the Princess as every man was, but I cannot believe that any commodity linked to her can be of any value _now_! What was it, anyway?" He fixed an incredulous look on the other man. 

"A child. Her child."

Crispinus swallowed, his laughter stopping immediately. "A son?"

"A daughter. An invaluable tool; do you not see? If this girl is claimed by the right person, raised as royal property and married at a suitable age, her lucky husband will have a claim to the throne, and the line will be continued!"

Crispinus began to splutter, blinking manically as he mentally reviewed all the facts. "But the lady was not married. This…girl…is a bastard. Her father, for all we know, is a commoner!" He caught himself suddenly. "We do not even know whether she exists, Quintus!"

Settling back, Quintus revelled in the security of his own knowledge. He took a real mouthful of the fine wine afforded by his lavish connections, savouring the flavour. "I do know. You see, I have found her."

"You have found the child?"

"Well, Didius has found her for me. His sweetheart's tongue becomes quite loose when he handles her properly." He smiled lasciviously.

Crispinus's eyes had grown so wide that they covered almost half of his face. "Well? Who is raising the spawn of that splendid creature?"

"Oh, just another of the lady's maids. An awfully meek, nervous thing named…Diana. Didius tells me they live in some squalid place outside the city, but that they are shockingly self-sufficient. Hardly a suitable home for the future Empress, don't you agree?"

Intense cynicism had clouded the other man's eyes once again. "I will not believe this until I see it, man. Nay, I will not believe it at all!" His face reddened with shock and buried envy of his lowly companion's coup. "You are stupid to even consider this. A bastard being raised as a pauper is worth nothing!"

"Perhaps. But how much is the daughter of the General Maximus worth?"


	6. V

Antoninus spied Diana long before she caught sight of him

Antoninus spied Diana long before she caught sight of him. The morning was temperately sunny, as if designed to make them comfortable as they courted one another, each from a safe distance. Safe, meaning allowing them to conceal their shyness whilst they might still admire one another.

During the sweltering summer, Diana had grown accustomed to taking her chores, such as sewing and washing, outside into the shade just beyond the brick building where she and Julia lived. Grateful for the cool air and chance to socialise with some of her previously haughty neighbours, she had also found herself, in recent days, longing for the chance to see Antoninus.

Julia had wandered out into the dusty road, where she sat playing with her collection of rag dolls, most of which Diana made in her free time. The child adored the open space and the attention she received from their fellow Romans, always captivated by her sweetness and sharpness of wit. Nonetheless, she kept herself mostly aloof from other children; always, when asked to play, she turned her button nose slightly upward and raised her eyebrows, as if she had not heard their request.

Diana would have laughed at this spectacle, had it not caused a strange foreboding in her heart. She herself did not feel the need to cultivate relationships with other women, but Julia would need friends. As Lucilla's handmaiden, apart from with the goodly princess herself, Diana had known no real female camaraderie, and had often felt the pinch of isolation terribly. She did not want the same thing for Julia – and was certain that the princess would not, either.

"Baby, stay away from that horse," she called out to the girl, constantly watching her out of the corner of her eye.

Julia promptly skipped out of the way of a man approaching atop a scruffy grey steed, barely glancing at what she was moving away from. Diana caught her small hand as she hurried back to her, gesturing for the girl to sit down by her feet. All the while, she subconsciously left a hand resting upon Julia's soft blonde hair, as if to reassure herself that she would not disappear. 

"Good morning," a voice said softly from Diana's left hand side.

She shivered visibly with fright, looking up into the sunlight at a familiar face. Without thinking, she smiled broadly, remaining silent. 

"May I sit down?"

Diana blushed furiously, remembering her manners. "Please," she mumbled, waving her free hand in the direction of a low stool a short distance away from hers. 

Antoninus sat, gazing at her somewhat confidently. Remembering Julia's revelations, Diana's cheeks burned even further as she grappled inwardly for something to say. Fortunately, he thought faster than she did.

"Good morning, Julia," he greeted the little girl, lowering his head to her level as she sat beside her mama, stroking her doll's hair.

"Good morning," she answered quietly, giving him a heartbreaking smile.

"I hope I do not seem too impetuous," the gentleman said, eyeing Diana confidently. She flushed again, seeing him up close for the first time. He seemed much too young to be handling a business by himself; not more than twenty-five. His smile wasn't in the least overbearing, as many professional men's expressions seemed – rather, it seemed to ask politely that she let her guard down, and allow them to be friends. She found herself smiling easily all of a sudden, as his soft brown eyes held hers gently but firmly.

"You do not," she said quietly. "My daughter takes so much of my time that I must seem the impudent one. My name is Diana."

"Antoninus," he replied, bowing slightly and holding his hand out for hers. He grinned again at Julia, making her squirm bashfully, before returning his stare to her mother. "Your daughter is delightful. You do not seem in the least impudent to me. I hope very much that you'll let me get to know you both better."

Proffering her quivering hand almost immediately, Diana looked directly at their companion, an unfamiliar although very pleasant sensation rising inside her – a facet of her being she had thought she would never be able to enjoy again.

From that morning on, Diana became somewhat lazy, all of her secret thoughts being reserved for her newfound friend. She carried out her domestic and parental duties as efficiently as before, if not more so, but now knowing as she did that there could be more to her life than these duties had broadened her horizons like nothing ever had.

Her meetings with him by day at the market were businesslike but friendly, Antoninus maintaining his tradesman's composure while she likewise played the busy, distracted mother. Their meetings in the evening, however were entirely different affairs.

Diana would put an unwilling Julia to bed, clumsily deflecting the child's constant questions as to where she often disappeared to at night, before hurrying out to wait for him in a secluded part of the street. On an occasion such as this one, Antoninus seldom took long to arrive.

He was so well dressed, as usual, that he almost put her to shame as she stood in a plain, worn tunica, trying to suppress her shivering as he approached. However, he hardly seemed to notice as his smile spread across his handsome face and his wide, honest eyes shone with gladness to see her.

"My dear," he said softly, taking her hand and raising it to his lips. "Are you cold?" His expression told her he was captivated with her, yet she was far from ready to accept that he was. His friendship meant too much to her to risk sacrificing it for these new emotions, overwhelming as they were.

"I am not cold," she replied, trying to muster a little confidence. "In fact I am quite warm. May we sit in the shade?"

Moments later, they were sequestered in a small copse of fruit trees, the sweet smell of the land and the balmy half-darkness seeming to enclose them agreeably. They fell into conversation easily, Antoninus never letting go of her hand, and she silently wishing that she never had to take it away from him.

"You've done a wonderful job raising Julia alone," he complimented her, making her smile broadly. "She is absolutely beautiful, and so polite and intelligent. How is she lately?"

It was exactly the kind of praise she had craved fervently for almost five years, convinced that she would never inspire it, least of all in a man.

"Oh, thank you. She's very cheerful, though she resents being left with only our neighbours to keep an eye on her. She is a handful, but she means the world to me. She was a special gift to me, you see, and I'm determined to honour the person who gave her to me, whom I loved very much." Despite her strained tranquillity, her voice broke a little and her eyes pricked invisibly with tears.

Antoninus, of course, did not detect any riddle in her words as he stroked her fingers sympathetically.

"Your husband?"

"Yes," she replied with practised poise.

"You may tell me about him if you wish, you know, Diana. Please never hesitate to tell me anything." He squeezed her hand gently in reassurance.

"His name was…Marius. We were married not long before he joined the emperor's Praetorian guard. Julia…was born several months after he was killed in action shortly before the death of Commodus."

"So you are a widow," Antoninus said, his voice becoming gentler, but at the same time remaining softly authoritative. "Raising your baby by yourself in this city. What a wonderful woman you are."

Her eyes joined with his, filling with spontaneous tears, this time of joy, as she smiled. Gratitude welled up inside her, ready to spill over. The look he returned caused her breathing to cease. For one heart-stopping moment, he looked as if he would kiss her.

Instead he kissed her hand again, his own breath hot against her skin, making her exhale audibly. 

They sat up a while longer, talking less suggestively, before he walked her slowly back to her building. Half of her was hoping he _would_ kiss her before he left, but he did not. Instead he told her again that she was a wonderful woman, and held both her hands and her gaze for a long, long time.

Walking slowly back to her room, she consoled herself by hoping he would visit her again the next day. 

The apartment door opened with a creak, and Diana was stunned to see Julia still awake. She had put her dolls underneath her bed, unusually, and was braiding her own sumptuous long hair with focused concentration. It took her several seconds to acknowledge her mother's presence through her large sleepy eyes.

"Julia," Diana said sternly. "Sleep!"

"You go out every night to see Antoninus, don't you?" the little girl said, smiling audaciously.

Flustered, Diana hurried to sit on the child's bed, where she pulled up her covers and tucked them in again tightly. "You impertinent little thing! You will sleep now, and then in the morning you will learn to mind your own business!"

She watched as Julia's face fell, the childishly forlorn expression tugging at her heartstrings as it unfailingly did.

"Oh…I am sorry. You have a right to know. Yes, I see Antoninus." She smiled. "But you of all people should approve of that!"

"I do. He is a very nice man. Are you going to marry him?"

That last question caused Diana to lie awake herself that night, wondering what, if anything, lay in their futures in this humdrum area of the city. Four years had passed, each day as uneventful as the last, the only enthralment to be found being watching Julia blossom into a girl. Was Antoninus, in his tenderly vigorous pursuit of her, about to change everything?

Her whole body warming at the thought of him, Diana sincerely hoped that he was.

The following day, in between playing dolls with Julia for hours, Diana dreamily counted the hours until Antoninus may possibly visit her again. They had plenty of supplies in their little home, so going to market again was not an option, unless she wished to appear odd to him. In her mind's eye she kept a picture of him just as she had seen him last: his height and build, the fineness of his clothes, the mildly forceful kindness in his expression and touch.

The day was cool, as they found sitting in their usual spot in the square, yet she felt warm almost perpetually; a glowing warmth he had caused, far below her skin. 

Julia guessed what her mother was thinking about, but did not care to mention it. It seemed exceedingly silly to her. Far less interesting than appraising, sullenly, the state of her dollies; their clothes, like her own, were not nearly as sumptuous as she would have liked – not liked the beautiful gowns and jewels she had seen upon wealthy women crossing this section of town, no doubt on the way to a land of great big houses elsewhere, the kind fit for such royalty as they seemed to be.

"I want to learn to sew, Mama," she said, disturbing the woman's trance-like state of reflection as she held up the two dolls in her hands. "I need to make new clothes for these, and for me and you if you like. I think it must be nice to wear fine things, like those ladies we see sometimes riding here."

Diana's eyes widened involuntarily as several new images filled her mind. All those times she herself had worn such things; times that Julia could never know about, not if their clean break with bygone times was to be complete.

"I will teach you to sew," she replied, her voice somewhat flat even as she smiled down at the quick-witted child, just barely five years old. "But you must promise, if you make such garments which I have no doubt you will, that you never become as shallow as those ladies. It's a hollow world they live in, darling. They have none of the freedom we have here."

Julia wrinkled her nose, thinking. "I promise, but I still shouldn't mind trying it, just a bit. I'm sure Antoninus would enjoy seeing you in pretty cloth and jewels."

"Julia! What did we talk about last night?"

The child squealed with delight and terror as Diana pulled her small body onto her lap, tickling her tummy as she hugged her tightly. Both, for a moment, ignored the two extremely well dressed, dour-looking men approaching them slowly from across the short, sandy expanse of the square.

The older of the two men was clearly in charge of the operation, and not enjoying the location of this proposed meeting. He wafted a few flies from around his face, kicking the dirt ahead of him distastefully, he gaze remaining fixed upon the woman and child not far ahead. The man following him walked slightly faster, seeming less focused, but well informed of what was shortly to happen. A servant.

When Diana spotted them, her heart seemed to stop beating. A horrible coldness spreading from inside her chest held her paralysed for a moment as Julia, sensing her discontent, ceased squirming in her lap and looked vaguely in the direction of their approaching visitors. 

Quintus, catching the former maidservant's horrified stare, smiled serenely and did not tarry to introduce himself, and inform her that he knew who she was. Seeing her blanch as her predicament registered itself in her mind, he took a certain pleasure. But not as great as that he felt upon fixing his eyes upon the little girl she held close to her, staring up at him with suspicious eyes. A face framed by curling fair hair, and a mouth set so defiantly. The resemblance was unmistakeable – but not with this woman, this impostor parent.

The child was a living replica of its true mother.

"Sir, you are not listening to me," Diana blustered, struggling under the impossible burden of her fear. "I am no longer anything to do with the Imperial family. I was nothing to them long before the Princess's death! I served as a member of her train along with a succession of other young girls. Why do you now single me out?"

"Because," Quintus began calmly, "You have this." He waved a hand at a pile of Julia's toys and blankets in the corner of the room. His hostess had only very reluctantly allowed them inside, if only to prevent causing a scene out in the street. Julia was next door in the care of a neighbour.

"What about my child?" the young woman spat, standing a little more still in her well-rehearsed façade of innocence. "What possible interest can you have in her? She is _mine._"

"Madam, you may stop this now," he commanded casually. "We know everything. Now we have seen the proof, we both can benefit from this discovery."

"What discovery? There's nothing to discover here. Years have passed since I left the Palace. You have no right whatsoever to come to my home and spout innuendoes about my past and my daughter! You make no sense!"

Didius fidgeted, painfully nervous, as he stood beside Quintus. The opposition they made was almost comical. The older man knew what he was doing, why he was here, but left all the guilt to his manservant, him having relayed the rumour in question in the first place.

"Please be seated, Madam. You do not look well."

"I will not be told what to do in my own home. Neither will I be patronised."

Quintus shook his head, staring at her. She was stronger, more beautiful, than what he remembered of her: the ruined little foundling of the benevolent Princess. Always anxious to please, to be of service, but most of all to hide from prying eyes. Did she isolate herself even now?

"How bold you are now, Diana. How honourable. It must be a strange feeling for you, having to be so upstanding and pure. Do you have a lover now? How many more fatherless children have you produced?"

Diana felt her stomach lurch and her face flame up. She wanted to scream, to hit out at this man with both her fists. To kill him. She had never felt so scared and so angry at the same time before in her life.

"You know nothing, sir. _Nothing_. Now get out of my home."

He did not appear to listen. "Do not think you will be overlooked because of your dubious history. Though I believed at first that the child you returned with from Greece, that splendid specimen of royal progeny, was your own bastard, I do not so now. I firmly believe, though I did not always, that Lucilla did give birth to her. And that the General Maximus is her father."

Diana gasped loudly. "They were lovers?" she said, despite her rage. It was news entirely to her.

But it explained so many things, so many qualities in Julia that were plainly not her mother's, though Diana could not quite pinpoint them at this moment.

Quintus laughed. "Of course, you knew nothing. What a fool I was to think that the lady would have enlightened you! Soiled your already tainted honour even more!" His laughter continued until even Didius smiled gleefully.

Their hostess was now so angry that it hurt her to breath. She clenched her fists until they stung. "Get out of here. You will never take my child away from me." Tears welled in her eyes as she realised that these men did know the truth, and that they meant to have Julia. Terror and grief at the thought built inside her until she seriously thought she might burst.

"Oh, Diana, we will not take her yet!" Quintus said, feigning charity. "We will give you time, a few days, to say goodbye, you know. Pack up her things. On Tuesday morning, my man here will be around to inspect the child. Send him back with a time convenient for us to come and collect her."

Frozen with horror, for a moment Diana was able to do nothing but stand and gape. As the door was closing behind the two unwelcome guests, she began to wail. Starting to follow them, she stopped again, quietening, checking her behaviour. Already there would be gossip about those men coming into her room. She did not want to incriminate herself any further – to draw even more spectators to her deception.

Moments later, having reclaimed Julia from next door, they held one another for a long time, both crying softly. Diana tried to breathe in enough of the girl's scent so as to keep it forever; absently, she thought of cutting a piece of the toddler's silken hair, before catching herself.

"I'm so sorry, darling," she sobbed onto Julia's tiny shoulder. "I'm sorry I let those men in. I won't let them take you. I won't ever give you away."

"Of course you won't," the child answered, bewilderment reverberating in her sweet high-pitched tones. "I'll never go with them. You're my mama. I'm not going to leave you."

Diana held her tighter, feeling the baby's little arms around her neck, letting herself think of Lucilla. Before the lady had died, her handmaiden had been certain she would never be able to truly love this living bequest – certain that she would never be a good mother. She'd been so unprepared for the strength of her feelings for Julia. It had taken this danger for her to finally realise them in full.

_I won't fail you yet, my lady, _she vowed silently._ That bastard will never have your child; the child you entrusted to me to love and protect._


	7. VI

Diana did not sleep a wink the night Quintus and Didius called on her

Diana did not sleep a wink the night Quintus and Didius called on her. Julia, exhausted by the day's events, began snoring the moment her little head hit the pillow. This should have allowed her mother to rest easier, but it did not. She paced the floors of their room for many hours, before it dawned on her, with amazing simplicity, what she must do.

Pulling a heavy wooden chest out from under her bed, she began filling it with their belongings quickly, more tears streaming down her face atop the dried salty residue of earlier that evening. Not all of the things they had acquired would fit in, so carelessly she began throwing old tunicas and other garments down onto the floor. There was no time to waste. They would leave as soon as possible, once Didius had paid his little 'inspection' visit.

***

Antoninus thought at length of Diana, as he did every minute of every day, laying out his merchandise at market the next day. When they talked, he had noticed that she was somewhat reserved in what she told him about her past, but it bothered him very little, as there were many things she didn't know about him either. Sharing so many secrets so soon made him uncomfortable; first he wished to wait until he had her heart, her promise to be his wife.

Born in the middle of the reign of Marcus Aurelius, his ambitious father had named him after the Antonine dynasty under whose rule the Empire had so far flourished. Nonetheless, his son had never seen any need whatsoever for airs and pretences based on one's status. His great-uncle had wished for him to take his place in the Senate upon his death, yet Antoninus had absolutely no interest in politics. He made a more than sufficient living in this more honest part of Rome, selling splendid handmade pottery in old Greek designs. Some people called him an artist; he called himself a tradesman.

His life was almost complete. He had money, a good home in a modest villa nearby, good friends, and now Diana. When they had first met, he had thought her somewhat clumsy, though thoughtful, sweet-tempered and an unfailingly good mother. He saw her true beauty where others saw plainness, and he had replaced her almost constantly brooding expression with many a rare smile. Now he loved her – he was in no doubt whatsoever that she had been placed on this earth to be his forever. He planned to ask for her hand that evening.

***

Meanwhile, the morning was agonising for Diana, who by sunrise felt too exhausted to continue packing. She could not do so anyway once Julia awoke, for fear of panicking the little girl who had done nothing to deserve this burden. Much to her mother's further worry and dismay, however, she seemed to know what was happening already. The child lay abed for a long time, staring at the ceiling reflectively, while Diana stood by the small window, shivering. "That man is coming today, isn't he, Mama?" 

"Yes, darling," she replied, her voice trembling even more than her body. "But there's nothing to worry about. You will stay silent if he speaks to you…though that is normally impolite, there is no reason to be mannerly with these people. I won't let him touch you. Do not move from my side while he's here."

Julia nodded knowingly. "I already knew that I should do all that."

Three endless, excruciating hours later, Diana all but cried out with shock and trepidation when several loud knocks sounded on their door. Squeezing Julia's hand and ordering her again to sit still and be quiet, she rose stiffly, breathing deeply. Quickly she reminded herself that this was not Quintus, the man she despised more than anyone in the world at this moment – it was merely his bumbling manservant.

She opened the door slowly, revealing his nervous, smiling features. "Good day, Madam."

"Good day, Didius." She saw no reason to show him any respect by addressing him as 'sir'.

He ignored the barbs in her voice and manner. "May I come in?"

"Of course." The door creaked open, her hand a vice-grip on the handle. Diana was determined to remain in complete control of the whole repugnant affair.

Didius entered, his steps small and nervous, hardly making a sound as he crossed the rug-covered floors of the small apartment. Behind him, Diana swept up Julia's short, stout frame into her arms and stroked the little girl's long hair to try and calm her. _Why must you be so intelligent? _she asked her silently. _Why must you sense every little thing that happens, good or bad? I fear for you…and not simply because I think I might lose you today._

__At that moment, as mother and child both burned invisible holes into his back with their fiery eyes, Didius swung around, his own gaze full of dread and his voice crackly with nervousness. "I feel I must say something to reassure you, Madam."

"What can you possibly say that will reassure me? Your master wishes to take my daughter from me."

Didius frowned. "My master acts upon his own selfish ambitions. Because he does not believe that your daughter is actually your daughter – a sentiment that, I, for one, do not share – he does not believe that you will grieve if separated from her. He has very little compassion for anyone, Madam. Least of all for women and children. You must, _must_, accept my apologies on his behalf." 

Diana felt some of her composure begin to fail. Her heart bled, momentarily, for this poor servant – before she reminded herself not to trust him, under any circumstances. This was no time to take foolish risks. Not where Lucilla's baby, nay _her_ baby, was concerned.

"And what if I accept your apologies? Then am I supposed to hand Julia to your master without feeling, and just accept the brutality of both our fates?" Gradually, her voice was raised to shouting. "Do you have any idea what it is to raise a child? Any child that you love, regardless of whether you gave birth to it or not?"

Tears began to fill the young manservant's eyes. "No, I do not, Madam. But I am not blind to the predicament you face. I knew the first time I heard of my master's plan that no woman, least of all you – for I have heard of your goodness, Diana – would give up her child so easily. I do not expect you to give up Julia now or ever."

The woman's shivering subsided, just a little. "Then what am I to do?" 

Didius's gaze fell from the formidable, tormented figure before him to the little girl stood at her side. He recalled his master's conviction that Julia's father was indeed the General Maximus. The child clung to her mother's shabby skirts, staring back up at him boldly, her eyes almost too large and to fiery for one so small and so young. He tried to smile at Diana.

"I am going to do my duty and report back to my master. He plans to visit you himself in three days' time; by then I hope you will do the right thing for yourself and the child and leave this place, and never look back. She is blameless and deserves a better life than the one my master wishes for her." The servant's forehead creased with the beginnings of rage. "He has no claim to her. No claim to anything…yet he wants everything that is not his, and was never meant to be."

Diana almost did not hear that last comment. Her memories of Quintus were as hazy as those of the General, or Emperor Commodus, or her father. Had she blocked every man out of her recollection entirely? "I had already planned to leave; very soon, in fact. If we go, will your master punish you?"

Surprised that she should be concerned, he took a moment before answering. "I doubt it, though I'm willing to take the risk. He thinks I have no gumption, least of all to refuse to carry out his wishes." Didius smiled, albeit bitterly. "He knows nothing of me, really, the stupid man." He turned to leave, despite little Julia's attempts to hold eye contact with him.

"Didius, wait," Diana said, suddenly and inexplicably feeling totally drained. A sharp pain cut through her forehead as she gazed down at Julia. "Does she look like the child of a Spaniard to you?" The word 'Spaniard' was her only reminiscence of any description of Maximus. She had only lain eyes on him as he had fought in the Colosseum – from up in the Imperial box, where she had accompanied Lucilla, those few times that her stomach had allowed it.

Julia's hand tightened loyally around her own as Didius turned back to them both. Once forcing himself to examine the child properly, all he saw was a miniature carbon copy of the late Princess of Rome. As far as he could see, there was nothing of the legendary general in her.

***

Antoninus began to grow nervous as he left his villa for Diana's building, steeling himself to ask her to be his wife. He had lost count of the number of times they had liased in secret, the number of times he had rehearsed these moments in his mind. Yet now he was still uneasy. Part of him, he could just about admit to himself, was afraid she would reject him. Even as every look she gave him, every chaste kiss and embrace, seemed to beg him to ask her. 

The semi-darkness of early evening seemed suddenly oppressive as he approached her building, expecting to see her waiting outside for him. But the area was deserted. Before this could begin to worry him, however, a new problem walked slowly towards him from down a nearby road. 

A man, slightly younger than Antoninus, approached him a little too confidently for his liking, a small, sardonic smile on his face. His clothes were suspiciously grand looking, not quite seeming to fit with his already impudent-seeming manner. Antoninus bowed his head in greeting, hoping that the stranger would pass him by completely.

For a moment, it looked as though he would. But no such luck. He strode closer to Diana's building than where Antoninus stood, watching him intently, before turning at smiling at the other man. "Good evening," he said, with mock cheerfulness.

"Good evening," Antoninus replied flatly, turning away dismissively.

"You are a friend of Diana, are you not?"

He turned towards the stranger, frowning incredulously. "I don't believe that is any of your business, sir."

The man seemed unperturbed. His face grew serious as he spoke, his tone full of bitterness. "She was my business once. When both of us inhabited much higher stations than this." He turned and cast a jaded glance over the empty, darkening square around them.

"Why should that concern _me_?" Anger, a sentiment Antoninus was unaccustomed to, built in his voice as he listened in amazement.

"Because," Mercifully, the stranger began to walk away. "Now may not be the best of times to consort with her. I've followed her movements since we were separated some time ago – for I have every right to – and I have a clear idea what is about to happen. Those men who visited her just this week are more powerful than she realises."

"Men visit her?" Antoninus almost wheezed in disbelief. Why hadn't he known? Why hadn't she told him?

The other man's face twisted into a wry grin. "But of course, she wouldn't want to spoil her tryst with you by telling you of them. She is a woman of secrets, sir. I merely thought that I should warn you. Goodbye."

Antoninus, paralysed with shock, merely stood gaping as the stranger took his leave. He stared back, his eyesight misted over with tears, at Diana's window on her building, before turning groggily to walk away. If she was in trouble with some higher power, there was simply no way he could propose to her yet. His heart sinking, he wondered at this sudden turn of events, and then cursed himself for not sensing that anything was awry before, when all the warning signs were there: her secrecy and quietness, her blatantly upper-class mannerisms, her reluctance to allow him to court her openly. She could not possibly love him if she could hide so much.

***

Julia sat on her bed, watching her mother closely as she raced around the room in paroxysms of fear, throwing yet more belongings into the wooden chest that had sat collecting dust in their room for five years. Diana had let her long dark hair fall out of the pin she wore unfailingly, letting it fall around her face. Her cheeks were flushed red as tears streamed sporadically down them from her glowing eyes. Not even the little five-year-old girl missed the irony that, even as her mama had probably never been more miserable, she had never looked more beautiful either.

"Mama?" Julia said quietly, looking at the mess of things strewn around her and wondering how she might try to help. "What's happening? Are we going somewhere?"

"Yes, baby," Diana replied feverishly, smiling forcedly. "We have to leave. It might be a long journey, but we'll be all right. I've travelled a long way before."

"Do we have to leave?" 

"Yes." 

"Is it because that man's master wants to take me?"

Diana stopped short of packing Lucilla's jewellery box into the trunk. She looked imploringly at the child, and wondered why she had thought that, having seen Julia for himself and seen that there was plainly nothing of the legendary Spaniard in her, Didius would convince his master to leave them alone. How stupidly naïve of her, and how damaging for the innocent little girl. 

"That man's master will never take you from me, Julia. You are my daughter. Don't ever doubt that."

"Then what did you mean when you asked if he thought I was a Spaniard?"

Diana's heart sank. "I didn't mean anything. I told you, I'll tell you all about your father when you're old enough to understand." The woman wrapped the precious golden box in a soft piece of wool and placed in deep down in the chest, beneath their clothes. "You're far too young to know of these things. I should never have let you stay here while that man was here."

She sat down, suddenly, on her own bed, feeling nauseous. The headache that had been plaguing her for several days had returned with a vengeance today. Taking a large draught of water from a cup left on a low table nearby, she tried to fight the fatigue and sickness threatening to overcome her. This was no time for her constitution, already weak, to fail her.

Only Julia sensed how ill her mother was becoming. She knew they would not be going anywhere, and that Diana would never be strong enough to protect her on her own.


	8. VII

Author's Note: I want to take time now and thank the many people who've helped this story come along as far as it has: 

**Author's Note: **I want to take time now and thank the many people who've helped this story come along as far as it has: Freddy, Marxbros and Yedi, your knowledge of this era and helpful suggestions could not have been more appreciated! I'd also like to acknowledge a few friends and admirers, namely Heather, Clare, Michelle, Adam, Sarah and Gemma, without whose support I could not continue writing. Sorry this acknowledgement has been so long in coming!

***

By the morning following Didius's visit, Diana could barely stand up, let alone continue plotting their escape. The hot weather had come around again, yet it was not merely the merciless sun beating into the small, humid space of their apartment that left her indisposed.In the small hours, nonetheless, after managing a few snatches of dry, restless sleep, she lay planning still, consumed even now by the hatred, anger and fear of the previous day.

Sitting up, dazed, in her bed, she quickly threw some cool water over her face and hair in an attempt to revive herself further out of sleep. It hardly had any effect, as if the air was heavy with some invisible substance as well as oppressively hot. Failing that, she hurriedly ate a few morsels of fruit and cheese, even though she had no appetite whatsoever – rather, she felt very sick. Her headache soon returned, and her nose began to run. Julia, dressing herself atop her own bed, stared worriedly at her mother, but said nothing, not wishing to trouble her any further.

They walked out together to fetch water that day, walking fast, Diana talking almost to herself as she voiced the decisions and strategies she had settled upon.

"We will go to Lanuvium to begin with – someone will show us the way there – and then we will decide where next to go. We cannot take any risks, and therefore we must not keep still for very long. Oh, Julia, this is all my fault. I'm so sorry I could not protect you…"

"But you are protecting me, Mama, or else why are we running away? I know you'll keep me safe."

Diana bit her lip. At least Julia's health and sanity seemed safe, no matter what they were about to go through. But was hers?

Walking back, laden with pails of water which Diana planned to conserve for their spontaneous journey, the distraught young woman continued to talk until she found herself rambling incoherently. Even the ever-unruffled little girl at her side seemed increasingly nervous, her childish breathing becoming deep and wheezy, and her little feet moving more quickly.

Her mother stumbled when they reached their home square again, almost falling flat on her face. Her strength had run dry, she realised, her head swimming with exhaustion. The world began to spin all around her. 

Julia turned to stare, her eyes flashing with shock as she saw Diana gradually falling onto her knees, even in her illness thinking to place the buckets of water down carefully so as not to spill any. Palms down on the sand, she coughed dryly, her eyes closed tight, sweat pouring down her cheeks.

"Mama!" Julia cried, encouraging her to stand back up. The suddenly ashen shade of her mother's skin frightened her more than anything ever had. She could see that Diana was about to vomit.

"I'm all right, baby," she said determinedly, swallowing hard. "I'll get up now, and we'll go home…" Concentrating all of her remaining energy into her legs, she managed to stand again, only taking Julia's proffered hands once she could support herself again. Tears of anger sprang up in her eyes as she leaned upon the little girl as lightly as possible, the surrounding area still blurry and her stomach suffused with nausea. She had promised to safeguard Lucilla's child, not the other way around. 

And no little fever was going to stop her fulfilling that promise.

***

Having slept on the events of the previous day, Antoninus had begun to think the better of his rash decision. Perhaps he could still have Diana as his wife – whatever events in her past had caused the interest of some impudent stranger, she was still a sweet and honourable woman now whom he had grown to know and love. Still, however, there remained some great secret she had yet to share. Because of this, he knew he could never look at her in quite the same way again.

Overwrought with tension at coming to visit her again, he mulled over what the stranger had implied about mystery men going to her apartment. Was it a malicious lie, as Antoninus dearly wanted to believe, or was she truly in some kind of trouble with powerful figures in the more affluent sections of Rome? He needed to know the answers to these many questions before he could commit himself to her once more. 

His love for her, nonetheless, stubbornly prevailed. How could his sweet, clumsy Diana be capable of such things as may displeasure the rulers of the Empire? At times he saw the ludicrousness of the matter, but then the question of the strange visitors returned, presenting another awful possibility – that she had another lover, or worse, lovers. This is what caused the most pain, more than any of the others.

Consequently, he delayed going to confront her for three days, before he could not endure the torture any longer. Taking a gift of a richly bejewelled bracelet, passed down through generations of women in his family, he set off for her building early in the evening, the usual time of their previous trysts.

A short distance from the building, he noticed a strange sound – a high-pitched kind of scream. Worried, even though he guessed it had nothing to do with him, Antoninus ran forwards. A couple of feet from the small building, he discerned, with a surge of fear, that the sound was a little girl's voice – coming from Diana's window.

Later, he was to remember nothing of the next few minutes, save banging on her door, and seeing it open to reveal her apparently lifeless body laid out across her bed. Her face was perfectly still, and drenched in perspiration, her mouth and eyes slightly open. Every inch of her visible flesh was white.

Horror-struck, it took a moment for Julia's continued screams for him to help her mama to reach his ears. Stumbling across the room, he fell by Diana's side, pressing his ear to her chest. 

"I didn't know what to do!" Julia cried, stroking her mother's hair. "I though she would be all right…she was very ill at first but she started to get better, then today she went like this…"

Dazed, Antoninus muttered something to reassure the little girl, wondering himself what he should do. His Diana seemed dead. Paralysed with shock, he inwardly prayed that it was not too late, and cursed himself for not coming to her sooner. If he had lost her because of his cowardice, he would die himself. He was sure of it.

***

Quintus was consumed with anxiety for the future of his latest enterprise. He had had to force himself to sit still and think rationally; not to storm about his house for days on end, feeling sorry for himself and half-heartedly plotting his next strategy. No, he told himself. I have dithered for five years – that will be enough.

Even though the idiot, Didius, had delivered the news that the surrogate mother Diana would not give up the child, he had forgiven him. Eight years of loyal service, not to mention companionship, would not be thrown away lightly. Nonetheless, however, Quintus's fury was so great he could almost taste it. This was too good an opportunity to let go on the insistence of a woman. He would have Lucilla's child, if he had to snatch her himself.

Didius's entreaties to the contrary fell upon staunchly deaf ears.

"The child does not belong to her any more than it does to me," his master insisted. "But only I can put her in her rightful place."

"Sir, I must beg you not to do this," his manservant pleaded. "I fear you know not what you are doing! This is immoral and cruel!" Didius longed to tell his master that he was making yet another disastrous choice, but secretly he pitied him too much to do so. Always, Quintus had seemed, recklessly, to do the things that would be of the most material advantage to him, no matter how harmful the decision might prove later – to himself or to other people.

"I have to act quickly, Didius, to secure her future. It is as simple as that." Quintus smiled smugly as he spoke. _Nay, to secure _my _future_.

Helping the older man into his cloak, Didius felt so exasperated that he actually began to shake. "If you must do this, then, you must be certain that you will not regret it later. Are you certain?"

"I am. I saw that child. I saw that there was nothing of the handmaiden in her."

_Then this is out of my hands,_ Didius mourned silently, remembering Diana's face as he had revealed his master's intention. He watched his master walk briskly out into the Roman night to retrieve his prize, trying to suppress the image in his mind of the frightened brown eyes, and thin, trembling white fingers clasping her daughter, so unaware that there was little the manservant could do to prevent Quintus from acting on his terrible ambition.

A strange chill had descended upon the city, which Quintus was certain had little to do with the weather. His step was confident as he traversed over the darkened streets, though his feelings were not. For days he had been purely optimistic, allowing himself to picture times to come when his motivation would finally be justified. Now, however, he could not seem to hold on to this hopefulness.

Apart from a few voices and sounds of animals in the distance, the area was strangely silent. He tried to distract himself by mentally rehearsing the tactics he would employ in wresting young Julia from her guardian's interminable grip: firstly, admonitions that giving her away would be the right thing to do for the Empire, then firmer reassurances that if Lady Lucilla had not been so 'indisposed' before her death, she would have blessed this particular course of action. Mulling over this last, Quintus suddenly froze.

_She will never believe that_, he realised, becoming more nervous. _Who was closer to her at that island than the wenches she took there with her? Oh, these are treacherous thoughts, terrible thoughts…_

__Feeling light-headed all of a sudden, he could not fight off the remnants of his memories and buried feelings for the tenacious princess. He caught himself smiling dreamily, remembering every feature of her face, figure, voice and posture that had tantalised him so. Not only the sexual attraction, however much he would fain have ever admitted it out loud; her wisdom and shrewdness, even her manipulations. All of it had made him love her. He had loved her.

"Lucilla…" he muttered, trying to walk on, refusing to turn back.

The night air seemed to be making him drunk – its effect was more potent than the strongest wine in the world could have been. Rather than making him feel guilty for what he was about to force himself to do, the memory of Lucilla seemed to be making him even more determined to claim her daughter, as if he felt some responsibility for the child…that child that he dearly wished had been his own, even though he knew the Princess of Rome would never have let him enjoy physically. She had never shown him any affection beyond common courtesy.

"I'm going now, my darling," he said, regaining his bearings. "I'm going to get our little girl. Our little empress!"

Reaching Diana's building, he hurried, swaying, up the stairs, struggling to find the right door. When he finally did, he managed to stand staidly, and knocked three times. The door swung open by itself, revealing that the room was empty, and clearly recently vacated. No belongings remained, save a few old items of clothing strewn on the bare floor.

***

Diana was a girl again. A gangly teenager, fourteen years old, treading the marble floors of the Imperial Palace with the bearing of a woman twice her age, remembering her etiquette training dutifully. Once she could no longer hear voices in the rooms nearby, however, and confident that she was alone, she began to run.

The apartments of her mistress, Lucilla, Princess of Rome, seemed to beckon her with their promise of sanctuary and warmth in the presence of the good lady. Lucilla had been a goddess to her young handmaiden ever since she had been placed in her service just over a year before. Almost the whole world was unfriendly to the girl, and rightly so, since she had shamed her family so badly. A life as a servant girl had been meant to be punishment. 

To Diana herself, it had been a miracle beyond all her fondest hopes.

Lucilla was sat at her desk, writing on parchments, when the girl slowed her pace to walk sedately into her bedchamber. The ladies in waiting had been ordered to stay at the other end of the palace, awaiting the arrival of Prince Commodus in their mistress's stead, but Diana alone had been told that she was welcome to return any time she liked. "I will be lonely," the lady had said, "and I'd hate to think of you getting bored welcoming my brother. I know he is not the most interesting man in the world." Diana had giggled, loving their little conspiracy.

Raising her eyes to where the teenager stood, the princess smiled warmly and stood, holding out her hands, which Diana gladly took. 

"Well, my dear? Is my brother happy to be home?"

The prince was just barely older than Diana, and had clearly been feeling rather neglected since his beloved sister had married Lucius Verus, a favourite of their father's. Diana did not like Commodus one bit, and avoided him whenever she could, especially on homecomings such as these.

"He seemed very irritable, my lady. He pushed past his own servants and completely ignored us. He didn't say hello to anyone. I think he was unhappy because you were not there to meet him."

Lucilla rolled her eyes, placing an arm around Diana's shoulders and leading them to her magnificent bed of state, where they both sat down. She offered the girl some fruit from a nearby table, which she accepted with thanks. Diana was her favourite, her foundling, the daughter she had not yet had. Wherever possible she was treated as such, not like a maidservant. However she had shamed her family, her mistress forgave her, being barely more than a child.

"What about you, _cara_," Lucilla said to her quietly. "How are you lately? Now we can talk properly without anyone listening, I want to know how I can look after you. Come now, tell me everything." She gave the girl's waist a gentle squeeze of encouragement.

Diana smiled up at the lady's affably smiling face, her own smile falling a little. "If I am truthful, my lady, things are terrible. I've been very irresponsible, and yet as much as I try to be a better person, I can't seem to stop getting things wrong…" Tears filled her eyes as she rolled a large apple in her hands, suddenly not wanting so much to eat it.

"Shhhh," Lucilla tried to sooth her, resting Diana's dark head on her shoulder. "You're doing the best you possibly can. Don't think I haven't been watching you. You're everything I hoped you'd be, you know. Not a single day goes by when I don't feel tremendously proud of you. You do everything right, Diana."

"Then why is everything going so wrong?" the girl sobbed.

"Because of bad men," Lucilla said simply. "Selfish, unscrupulous men. Nevertheless I trust you, my dear, and I know that you will be fine. Not all men are so terrible, you see."

Diana shuffled slightly away, turning to face the princess. "Antoninus?"

"Yes."

"He truly cares for me? And Julia?"

"You and Julia. He stayed away for a while merely because of some lies told to him – lies he knew to be untrue. He loves you with all of his heart. You will be happy with him. Be happy, _cara_."

"And what of Julia? Am I a good enough mother to her…can I protect her from all the evil in the world?"

Lucilla nodded slowly, her smile becoming a little sullen. "You are a wonderful mother. As far as you can protect her, you will." The lady stood then, gazing reassuringly at her 'chosen one', who saw only an angel bathed in ethereal light, as she always seemed did. "You must promise me only one thing."

"Anything."

"Never let my Julia have to face what she is."

Before Diana could ask any questions, her mistress placed a finger over her lips. "Not now – later. You have your duties to attend to now. Go back, go back. I will see you again, my dear." In one movement, the Princess of Rome smiled, turned and left; within seconds, it seemed, she was gone. 

Perplexed by the odd command, and disappointed by her sudden departure, strangely Diana felt more contented than she had in a long time. Taking a deep breath, she contemplated the 'duties' Lucilla had spoken of, and felt newly determined to do as she had said. _Yes, my lady. I will attend to my duties now._


	9. VIII

Antoninus had imagined that, after Diana had accepted him, they would be making their home together under much happier circums

**Author's Note**: My new website for _The Legacy_, I'm happy to say, is up for business. Do drop by sometime. [http://mystorythelegacy.homestead.com/intro.html][1]

***

Antoninus watched his Diana, sprawled across his bed, having been speedily carried to his villa after her near-miraculous defiance of an early death. Sipping tiny amounts of warm broth as she recovered slowly from the fever, roses came to her cheeks that seemed curiously alien, her skin having been uniformly pale for so long. She conscientiously avoided eye contact, merely staring at nothing in particular, while he gently stroked one of her calves in a soothing gesture. 

Her long ebony hair lay strewn about her shoulders, and the lush outlines of her body were clearly visible through a worn linen garment. She looked almost celestial, her limbs finally relaxed, her face glowingly serene. Her eyes were shining, almost star-struck, as though she could see something he could not.

He knew he should not be tantalised by her at such a time as this, yet something told him that this might be the last chance he would get to declare to her that he loved and forgave her, even if she thought it best that they did not wed.

"I was so sure we'd lost you," he said, his fingers moving down to her ankles, making her smile languidly and close her eyes. "Whatever brought you back?"

"An angel," she replied, with utter seriousness.

He smiled back. "Then I had better resume praying."

Much of her former vitality was gone forever, they both knew. So whether they married or not, she and Julia would be his to care for and protect from that day forth. Silently, he thanked the gods not only for giving her back, but also for giving her back to him.

They sat for some time like that, the gentle tension between them increasing, though not in an entirely unpleasant way. Both, nonetheless, harboured their doubts about what may or may not soon happen between them. Antoninus feared the revelation of Diana's secrets, whereas she feared having to keep them from him for the rest of their lives. She comprehended that even if she ever could commit to a man with whom she could never share the true circumstances of Julia's birth, she would probably never forgive herself the deception either. 

Mindfully, she looked towards the wall beside her, where on the other side that little girl slept, herself most likely never to know what greatness she had really sprung from.

Antoninus, he admitted to himself, was beginning to think more leniently. Even as they rested there, he was planning their future together, with a care for his beloved's security from whatever it was that she concealed herself from.

"Where do you want to go, Diana?" he asked suddenly, holding her soulful brown gaze with his own. "I will take you and Julia anywhere you like. I haven't spent all these years accumulating all this," He gestured towards their more-than-comfortable surroundings. "Without ever imagining that I would share it…with a woman like you. I want you to live with me, even if you cannot be my wife yet. I will give you all the time you need, if you will agree."

Her eyes brimmed with tears as she listened, her lip quivering. Nonetheless she smiled, pushing her hands into his, aching for him to hold her. Seeing the insistence in her eyes he complied easily, pulling her to him in his strong arms as she pressed her face into his neck.

"I will go anywhere with you," she breathed against his skin. "I love you."

"I love you…" he began, having no words to express how strongly he truly felt. Gently he pushed her slightly away, staring at her lips as she leaned forward into his embrace again. As they kissed, he felt her willingness, her passion, and how long she had waited for him to do this. Gladness rose up inside him – for this was all the proof he needed that no other man had accosted her, that she belonged only to him.

It was to be their first, and last, night as true lovers for the ten years that would follow.

***

Within weeks, the countryside many miles south of Rome became their new home. Agreeing, however reluctantly, to live together as mere friends, Antoninus and Diana hired servants, for the purpose of chaperonage more than domestic work within their villa. Antoninus continued selling pottery to their neighbours, but mostly his living was made from farming the land around their home to feed themselves as well as bring in an income.

At first, Diana despised herself for being the inadvertent cause of his almost giving up his vocation. She had marvelled at the veritable works of art that were his pottery creations, at the designs full of such spellbinding detail that he produced and sold with such maddening indifference. Of course, she realised with a pang of affection for him, a man as sensitive as Antoninus was bound to possess a talent of some kind, and yet every sight of his work brought a new lump to her throat.

Her guilt was soon forgotten, however, as their fresh start brought them such sudden and unparalleled happiness. Living in the countryside made Diana realise what instinctive misery the urban areas of Rome had inspired within her, without her even noticing. In the day, after completing her duties as mistress of the villa, she rode her horse, as Antoninus had taught her to do, around the vast fields circling them for miles on end. She had little energy to spare following her illness, saving every spare ounce of it for these outdoor pastimes she found herself adoring.

Then, of course, with the passing of each blissful and prosperous year, there was the added pleasure of watching Julia thrive and grow into a most astounding young woman.

Antoninus had placed her atop a gentle young mare the very first chance he had got. Alongside her mother, she learned to ride enthusiastically, her strength and competence surprising everyone who saw. Just as the countryside had brought out the best in Diana, so Julia seemed to come out of some invisible shell, exploring the land fearlessly, hungry for sights and knowledge. She seemed to grow a little bit every day, physically and mentally, drinking in the world around her as if she had waited her whole short life just to arrive there.

Maybe she had, Diana thought secretly. If her father was indeed the General Maximus, it was unsurprising that she should love the country so much. As Lucilla's maid, she had heard stories of the legendary leader's humble beginnings as a farmer in Spain, and of his yearnings during his army service to return home.

Yet, perplexingly, in Julia's maturing body and countenance there seemed to be no sign of inheritence from the handsome Spaniard, even as Diana had never seen the general but from a distance. Not only that, Julia had grown progressively less like Lucilla over the years, a cause of deep sadness for her guardian. 

By aged fifteen, she was an unprecedented beauty – but neither in face nor form did she retain the same variety of luminosity or grace that had been the late Princess of Rome's most mesmeric attributes.

The girl's hair had darkened to a lustrous pale brown, though remained wavy, and in the sunlight contained only the faintest shimmers of copper and gold. She was short and sturdy, though slender, her hands and feet small and deceptively delicate, until she mounted her pony and showed her true strength. When she was caught enjoying her ride, however, her joviality seemed to cease, almost as though she were afraid of being caught in such high spirits.

Her face had grown too handsome to be considered traditionally pretty, though its heartrending beauty could not be denied, her skin growing milky in cool weather and lightly bronzed in the sun. Her smile was as bright and warm as Lucilla's had been, though she used it sparingly, as if it were a precious, easily tarnished piece of jewellery. 

Much too often, as with her riding, she seemed aware of some feminine code of propriety she had never been taught and yet felt that she had to adhere to. Her back was unfailingly straight when she walked, her voice very quiet and innocuous. She was prone to clumsiness, however, a cause of great shame and many blushes to the seemly teenager. Her carriage and manners were her most palpable royal heritage, next to her intelligence and sensitivity to others, the famed virtues of Marcus Aurelius, her grandfather.

Her eyes were supernatural, and as yet of unknown origin, to Diana at least. They were almost too large for her face, and the most extraordinary shade of amber in creation. In darkness, they seemed streaked with green, and in just the right level of light they actually twinkled. One wide-eyed glance from her, coupled with a smile, was usually enough to obtain all her desires. All who met her, particularly her stepfather (who quickly fell most desperately in fatherly love with her) were charmed beyond rescue.

Thankfully, she was not a selfish girl by nature. Consistently thoughtful, and always exercising her almost preternatural powers of perception and intuition, she possibly would have been overlooked by everyone were it not for her beauty. Watching her discreetly, as Diana frequently did, the older woman tried to picture Lucilla as a youngster, but somehow could not match her impression with what a mild and sweetly compliant teenager the lady's daughter had become. 

In her unwavering strength, Lucilla had undeniably been headstrong. Diana could not picture Julia, with her obviously overwhelming desire to please and to impress with her behaviour, ever being headstrong. For now, at least, she would not be.

"Ouch!" Julia yelped, nicking her finger with a needle as she mended a shirt of Antoninus's. Tears welled up in her lovely eyes. "I can't do this! I'll never make any man a good wife, Mama!" She smiled, tempering her self-condemnation, letting her work fall past her bare knees and onto the floor of the small pantry.

Diana stood over a board, kneading a large amount of fresh bread dough ready for the oven. She beamed in the girl's direction with a mixture of amusement, the pride she always felt at beholding her, and a faint hint of apprehension. "You needn't think of marriage yet, _cara_! There's plenty of time. And when you do, you will bring more to your marriage than any woman could. You can cook, clean…"

"But not sew." Julia kicked her mending further away and got up from the stool where she sat to join her mother, where she began helping flour the dough.

"You'll learn. Do you remember when you used to practice on your dolls' clothes? You said you would make fine clothes for us both. I believe you will yet."

Julia sighed. "I could never make such finery as those wealthy woman wear. I mean really wealthy, not comfortable like we are, but so…"

Diana frowned, turning slightly. "But you have everything here! Probably more than they have when you think hard enough. You have a good family, whereas many of those rich girls never see their parents, or get separated from their siblings…" Bitterness had wheedled its way into her voice. "Anyway, it must not be too pleasant, being lonely in one of those huge villas."

The girl's foul mood had softened slightly, but not so much that she could bring herself round to her mother's way of thinking. She abruptly stopped kneading the bread, dipped her small hands in a pitcher of water to clean them, before taking her modest palla from a nearby worktop and wrapping it around her head and shoulders.

Diana cast a mildly alarmed look at her daughter. "Where are you going?"

"Oh, not far. I'll go and sit in the fields for a little while. It's warm outside." Even as she finished speaking, she was well outside the house.

Diana stopped what she was doing, suddenly, inexplicably depressed. So Julia might be headstrong. When she was not doing her utmost to please everyone around her, the girl was worryingly withdrawn, even now when the dawn of a mild summer and the beginning of long, peaceful days at the villa for them should have made her happy. Was she so spoiled? Remembering the spare, hungry days in their Roman apartment, Diana told herself not to believe that.

She spent simply too much time alone in the long grass of the fields, dreaming, or whatever else it was she found to do out there. Diana had long been aware of her fantasies of people richer and more affluent than them, but could not bear to think of them making her ungrateful for everything Antoninus had given them. Yet, as this morning had shown, they seemed to be occupying every facet of her thoughts. Her mother could not, for the life of her, think why this could be.

Diana was about to find out that the source of Julia's preoccupation was none other than a wound – the wound where she had been torn away from the royal blood that had produced her. 

***

Another cool, scented night enveloped the villa, doing little to alleviate the burden of Diana's anxieties. In her well-furnished yet modestly comfortable bedroom, she sat up late, having been compelled to bring out Lucilla's jewellery box for the first time in years. Its golden edges were cold against her fingers as she opened it, making her want to rub it as though it were a genie's lamp, simply to make it warm again.

The neglected treasures inside lay covered with a piece of thin velvet. Upon taking it up, Diana brought it automatically to her nose, inhaling deeply. Yes, she found with a broad smile, as tears sprung from her eyes and down her face, there was the Princess's soft scent, of lemons and spices. She had not wept in such a long time – Antoninus had promised her, their first night together, that she would never cry again as long as she was with him. At least this time, her tears were due to happy memories, and only partial, mostly unfounded melancholy.

Feeling a sudden burst of optimism, she started to pick gently through the contents of the dear lady's box. Seconds later, she was interrupted by Antoninus's unmistakeable gentle knock upon the door. A wave of warmth and anticipation overpowered her pleasantly as she placed the box underneath her bed and rose to let him in.

Julia had been right, after all; it was much too warm outside for them to languish inside the villa. 

Diana lay chastely in her beloved friend's arms, allowing him to rest his face on top of her head. The feeling of his breath on the parting in her thick hair made goose bumps quiver on her bare arms and on the back of her neck, yet also relaxed her strangely. The slight nervousness she had always felt around Antoninus, since their first declarations of love, had subsided a little at last.

"Will you marry me now, Diana?"

She sat up suddenly, smiling widely, her face inches away from his. She was entirely without doubt for the first time in ten long years. They kissed clumsily but deeply, embracing tightly, as she mustered her answer easily.

"If we cannot marry tomorrow, I will be devastated!"

His relief was palpable as he exhaled loudly, pulling her to him again, touching the body that he had watched from afar and wanted so dearly for so long, with restrained ferocity. He waited for her cue to express the true extent of his feelings.

She got to her feet, surprising him, with a mischievous grin. "Come with me…out to the fields…"

They made their way out quickly, hand in hand, as far as they could before breathlessness seemed to pull them to the ground. Diana lay below him, wide eyed, as he ran his hands through her hair and over the smooth white flesh of her neck and shoulders. His lips quickly replacing his nimble fingers, he made her shiver and moan, in return doing her best to kiss and touch every part of him she could reach. A few exquisite moments later, their clothes were crushed beneath them against the roughness of the grass.

Diana curled her legs around his, bracing herself excitedly for that moment she had longed for. When it came, she cried out, her slight pain at the unfamiliarity of the act mixed with pleasure. As Antoninus started to move, his moans filling her ears, she whispered encouragement and words of love to him, her senses exploding with pleasure and relief.

It was not, technically, her first experience of lovemaking. In years to come, nonetheless, it was the one she would remember as her introduction to love.

For most of that night, they slept in one another's arms, until close to the dawn, when Diana was suddenly awoken by the delicious cool morning breeze and the strong smells of the land encircling her. A glimmer of golden sun in the sky stung her eyes as she put on her tunica again, rising soundlessly from beside her snoozing lover to hurry back to the villa before a servant could discover her bed empty.

Kneeling beside her bed, smiling at the feeling of warmth still coursing through her body following Antoninus's touch, she held the jewellery box once again. Its clasp remained undone, the way she had left it the previous night.

Taking out the various pieces of immeasurable value, she laid them reverently out upon the fabric of the bedspread, with as much respect as she had used to not so long after Lucilla's death, when they had been so upsetting to her and yet so addictive to behold. Gazing at them with fresh affection, the lady's handmaiden, shortly to become a gentleman farmer's bride, almost forgot the real reason she had retrieved the box in the first place.

She was immensely gentle with the bundle of papers, tied together with an old ribbon close to breaking with age and fray, as she pulled them out from the almost-hidden bottom section of the precious container. There were far too many to examine in a single sitting, so carefully Diana separated the stack into three piles, selection a single sheet from each one.

Yellow parchment, the richest kind in creation, crackled in her fingers as she appraised it lovingly. Lucilla's handwriting was perfectly preserved.

"As it always should be," Diana mouthed to herself.

The first two were letters – written, and yet never sent. Puzzled and vaguely dismayed, she tried to decipher first whom the letters were written to, and then why Lucilla could possibly have penned and then never delivered them, when it would have been so simple to do so. One…to her brother, Emperor Commodus, dated several weeks before his death in the Colosseum.

The second…to the General Maximus. Dated the very same day.

The letters became impossible to read all of a sudden. The Princess's handwriting was spidery and barely intelligible, as if she had been panicked somehow at the time. This was deeply alarming to Diana – never once had she seen her mistress panic, in all the years they had been so close. She had seen her weep sometimes, or hold her head in her hands with exhaustion or dejection, but never visibly agitated.

If she had wanted to communicate with either her brother or the General, she needn't have written letters to do so. With both men she could, and often did, speak to them personally, face-to-face. What could the purpose of these artefacts, then, have been?

Taking up the third paper, Diana merely gaped at it in disbelief. Her breath seemed to rush out her, as if she had been punched in the stomach. This was not a letter. It was a page from a makeshift diary.

   [1]: http://mystorythelegacy.homestead.com/intro.html



	10. IX

How can I begin, but at the beginning

**Warning: **The themes of this story are to become slightly more adult, beginning with this chapter. Future instalments will deal with such issues as the consequences of incest, rape and other such unhealthy relationships and incidents of violence. I advise you only to read on if you know you can deal with this.

***

My name is Annia Lucilla. This is my life.

How can I begin, but at the beginning? I am so busy trying to remember everything that has led up to these terrible times that I do not sleep anymore. I have decided to write instead, as my father taught me to. There is a memory – my father writing, endlessly writing, while I watched, never able to keep away for very long. My father, the Philosopher. I am no philosopher. I do not know what I am. I am no longer a daughter, no longer a wife. I am barely even a mother now that Commodus has monopolised my child. 

_How I hate Commodus, when such a short while ago I loved him more than life. How he would hate me if he could read this. Since I have been denying him entry to my bedchamber, a request I fear he will ignore one day soon, I know he has been longing to know what I am thinking, and what I do in here all day when I see no one. I must leave the palace at night in secret. My ladies tell the guards that I have not left at all. I do hate putting that burden upon their shoulders._

_They are innocent. My son is innocent. Maximus is innocent. Yet we are as bound as slaves, all of us, because my brother will not be satisfied. His coil is terminal; his anger is like a cage lined with spikes, so that if he stops wailing and lashing out, he will hurt even more. Why will he listen to no one? I knew him when he was innocent. Are all of us doomed to either end our days as Commodus will, or perish much sooner? I believe that my own life will be cut short, because I will not submit to my brother in the ways he most desires._

_Maximus is my emotional balm, and yet I will lose him soon. I am remembering the times when we belonged to one another, when he tied garlands of flowers around my wrists to mark me as his, and brashly refused to court me the way the other gentlemen did. Twenty years old and so handsome, so lusty, so utterly alive. He kissed my lips, not my hand. I was a girl who had spent her whole life within palace walls being trained to be a lady, to encourage only highborn aristocrats who treated me as such. And yet my first love, the man I chose myself to be my husband, was a soldier who took endless liberties with me._

_Now I am laughing, wondering what my mother would have said, nay done, had she known what we did together. _

_I loved it. I loved him, because of his vigour and rebelliousness. He has none of that now, when I see him, and he kisses my hand, not my lips, through the dungeon bars. The light has gone from his eyes. First, his sprit was crushed by the wars he fought. I know it. Then he died when she did, the woman he chose himself to be his wife. He loves me no longer. I will love him forever, my Maximus. I cried for him, consumed by worry, as I lay beside the husband they chose for me._

_I wanted my soldier back so much._

_I wanted our youth back, for both of us; to relive those days, from the first time he approached me when I managed to get my attendants to leave me in peace. I can still smell him sometimes, when I try to sleep, and feel the smoothness of his skin against mine in place of the bedcovers. I hear his voice, and hold back the tears, knowing we will never make love again the way we did as youngsters, in the long grasses and secret palace chambers. He said he loved me, smiling. Tonight when he stroked my cheek and smiled that way again, and when he kissed me, I didn't ever want it to end. _

_Perhaps I was wrong to go to my husband's bed having already been touched, but my Maximus did not sully me. What we had was purer and truer than any marital union could ever be. I thank the Gods for every single time he made love to me then, for introducing me to life, before we went our separate ways. For he was never to hold me in his arms that way again, I know. There will be no opportunity, I am certain, for us to be together now. He loves me no longer._

_I can only pray that my brother does not kill him, for I will never cease loving my brave General. I will hang on to these memories for the rest of my days._

_ _

***

A muted cry escaped Diana's lips, the papers all but slipping from her hands. A torrent of tears had poured down her face as she read, every sentence throwing her into an agony of grief, reviving recollections and emotions gradually buried over fifteen years. Every reference to the General Maximus negative, resigned…they had been separated completely, long before Julia's conception. Of course, he had been a slave: imprisoned, constantly watched. It made complete sense.

In their unworldly and idealistic youth, Diana and the other handmaidens had taken the Princess's mysterious late night visitations at face value – she was gone to visit a lover, no doubt the legendary gladiator. It now seemed next to impossible; in light of the lady's own secret confessions, that the lover was he – if she had had one. Yet Lucilla had borne a child, and the pregnancy definitely began around the time that this diary, this priceless artefact, had been created. There _had_ to have been a man. 

Still weeping, Diana reordered the pages of the diary and, ever so gently, wrapped them and placed them back in the jewellery box. Having placed it beneath a small table beside her bed, she stood and composed herself, drying her face and breathing deeply. Now, of all times, despite the barrage of unbearable possibilities now assaulting her brain, she had a right to a little happiness. 

Sitting on her bed, she took out a comb and began rearranging her soft, waist-length hair into the style Antoninus liked it best. She allowed herself a smile, thinking of her fiancé, beginning again to anticipate the day that would follow. He had arranged for them to be married then.

A fair number of their neighbours congregated to see them wed. Unable to take his eyes away from his bride for a moment, Antoninus noticed with pride and gladness how Diana's happiness made her skin, which in recent days had greyed worryingly with fatigue, glow shades of pink and bronze once again. Her hair was braided, wound and pinned atop her head, where Julia had adorned it with small dried flowers, having sewn similar blooms into the delicate pink linen gown her mother wore. Even in her quietness, the girl had shown her own delight at their marriage by creating the beautiful garment especially.

Diana herself, beneath her undeniable elation at finally becoming his wife, struggled to hide her inward turmoil from him all through their wedding celebrations. Several times, tears sprung in her eyes, which she struggled to keep from spilling. The perverseness of what she was now doing, in light of what she had so recently discovered, did not escape her. I am marrying a man with whom I can never share my greatest secrets, she thought, mouthing a curse upon herself. I need to confide in him more than anything else, and I never can.

She understood now why they had waited ten years when, had she initiated their relationship any time sooner, he would have gladly married her. Basking in the adulation of the numerous friends come to witness their nuptials, she watched her husband from a small distance, speaking good-naturedly with his new stepdaughter. 

Julia had smiled from ear to ear all day. She looked like the princess she was, dressed like Diana in delicate, hideously expensive linen, flowers adorning her gleaming dark auburn hair. Her huge eyes glistened as she accepted Antoninus's invitation to dance, blushing as she attempted some complicated steps, yet carrying them off with such truly majestic grace and carriage that Diana felt a shiver down her spine, wondering whether royal blood carried royal attributes within it to subsequent generations, without the need for training in regal characteristics.

As they danced, the pair caught Diana staring at them, and smiled and waved. She smiled back, the tears starting again against her will. Silently, she spoke to her husband: _How lucky you are, loving her as purely as you do when she is not your own. She is not mine either, and though I love her, I must now discover whose daughter she really is, before peace of mind can return._

The festivities carried on until the early hours of the next morning. When Diana and Antoninus sought Julia to tell her they were leaving, having decided to retire to bed, they found her curled up, fast asleep, beneath a tree. Chuckling, Antoninus bent down to lift her gently and carry her to the villa.

"She's exhausted because she was finishing your dress this morning before you got up. She told me she was determined to make you the most beautiful bride who ever lived." He looked at Diana, and then back at Julia, bursting with pride in his little family.

Diana, though touched at this knowledge, could not help recalling how moody the girl had become in recent days, and how the dress was more than likely meant to be some kind of an apology. Julia could be independent, headstrong, determined…so much like Lucilla. Even in her adolescence, she showed clear signs of developing the Princess's great sense of pride. 

The moods and bouts of silence, however, had to come from elsewhere. Steeling herself, Diana resolved that, after her wedding night, she would gather her reserves of strength and continue reading the diary.

Julia slept soundly that night in complete contentment, innocence, and safety from the truth of her beginnings. Unknown to both she and to Diana, it was to be the last such night of both their lives.

***

Several mornings later, Diana sat in the sun by the side of the villa, pretending to relax. Her duties as mistress of the house – all of those she was permitted to carry out, in her weakened state of health – completed in a couple of hours, she had no choice but to sit, and think. The previous three days had been a living hell.

She and Antoninus had spent almost the entire first two days of their marriage in bed – "To make up for lost time," he had lovingly declared. During that time, Diana had all but forgotten what had been troubling her, so delirious with joy had she been. Secretly, she was ashamed of herself for never realising what she had been missing during those years. His kisses and touches could _never_ get boring, she thought, enjoying the endless pleasures, physical and emotional, he constantly and enthusiastically gave to her.

Finally, reluctantly, they realised they had to get back to normal married life, reserving lovemaking for its proper time: at night. Julia turned a blind eye, blushing discreetly with her usual modesty and artlessness, the first time her parents emerged from their bedroom. The girl was, thankfully, fairly self-sufficient, taking care of herself mostly with only occasional assistance from the maid, Catalina.

Diana took up the diaries again quite by accident, feeling her heart sink and her eyes blur with tears once more as she saw Lucilla's handwriting, delicate and yet firm against the worn paper. As she read slowly, she chewed on some fruit, trying to restore some of her energy after Antoninus's loving 'attentions' had depleted them. The following few short, rushed, deeply troubling entries almost caused Diana to choke. The identity of Julia's true father, albeit cryptically, was placed directly before the former handmaiden's eyes. 

At last she knew why the Princess had not seen fit to tell them who he was. Not out of propriety. Not even out of loyalty. Out of pure _shame_.

Now, the midday sun beating down on her face, she wondered how she would ever look Julia in the eye ever again.

The blameless young girl in question saw her mother that evening, at dinner, as she returned from one of her long walks in the vast fields around the villa to find the woman sitting stony still at the table. 

The exercise had brought a healthy colour to Julia's usually sallow skin; her silken brown hair was dishevelled, and her large, bright eyes glistened as she smiled a greeting in Diana's direction, sitting in a ladylike fashion opposite her.

Diana bowed her head, feigning a headache when Catalina asked if anything was wrong. Closing her eyes, all she could see was Lucilla's writing, the hellish revelation flashing through her mind for the hundredth time at least.

_Dear Gods…the thing I feared most has come to pass. I can barely write, but I will. I must. I cannot let this rest upon my heart any longer._

__"Good evening, Julia," Antoninus greeted his stepdaughter, gazing at her and smiling widely. Under the table, he took his wife's limp, cold hand, and frowned. "Darling, are you alright? Diana?"

"I'm fine…I have a little headache. It's all this sun…"

_I denied him entry to my chambers; I did not let him see me…he said he had become impatient. He had told me my Maximus was imprisoned, that he was to die. All of Rome is a bloodbath now. I cannot see my son. Because I would not submit to him. Now he has broken down my door, and defiled me. Dirtied me. Raped me. _

Bile rose sickeningly in Diana's throat. She could not suppress the images in her mind of her mistress being blackmailed, threatened, and finally forced to…What must he have told her to frighten her so, to have her expect _that_?

_"You will provide me with an heir of pure blood."_

__He was twisted, deranged. Everyone told stories about him, tales that Diana, in her immaturity, had barely understood, let alone believed. Now she understood what had truly caused the misery that had driven Lucilla to her death. Not merely General Maximus's death.

_I loved my brother, while all the while he was readying me for the kill. He told me he would kill my Lucius if I resisted, and he would have. Oh Gods, now my brother has touched me. My hand shakes as I write this, my whole filthy body shakes. He has sullied me. I fear he will do it again, and there is nothing I can do but wait here, a prisoner, a whore to my brother. He is trying to leave a legacy, I know. Now he may have started some unnatural fruit in my body. I pray he has not._

__The last words in the diary, before a succession of empty pages. The last she had written before his death, Maximus's death, her own death. 

Diana fixed her eyes upon the bowl of steaming broth on the table before her, feeling the eyes of that 'unnatural fruit' upon her, full of concern. Eyes huge, streaked with startling bright green – she remembered those eyes, and that colour. Who could forget them? Hating herself suddenly, she felt the blood rushing out of her cheeks, leaving her face cast over with a horrible, telltale white pallor.

Across from her, Julia put down her spoon, unable to eat. She knew her mother was distressed about something, again – something to do with her. The dress had obviously failed to cheer her up. Julia was uneducated, yes, but she was far from stupid. She glanced knowingly at her stepfather, seeking some communication. His own eyes lay fixed upon his wife, as he reached over a hand to stroke her cheek.

Julia made the decision at that moment to go to her mother's room after dinner, to seek some evidence of what exactly was going on.


	11. X

That night, not far from where Diana and Julia tossed and turned in troubled sleep, Quintus found himself unable to rest at al

That night, not far from where Diana and Julia both tossed and turned in troubled slumber, Quintus found himself unable to sleep at all. He stared at the ceiling of the room where he had been born, the emptiness inside him seeming to increase slowly, painfully, just as he had begun to get used to it after these thirteen strange, aimless years. In the bed beside him, his mistress Cassia enjoyed perfectly undisturbed rest, her sumptuous fair hair tangled around her dewy face. 

Staring at her, Quintus reached over a hand to feel her ivory skin, moving it down briefly to graze the swell of her bosom above her nightgown. His fingers paused before they touched her, however, and he turned his back to her, oddly disgusted with himself.

Cassia had lived with him since, five years before, he had been dismissed from the service of Emperor Septimus Severus as a spy, a vocation he had chosen half-heartedly after giving up trying to locate Diana and Julia. It was at that time that the sheer pointlessness of his existence had truly hit him. He had started to drink, then stopped, at Didius's urging. 

Quintus had surmised, though he shared the fact with no one, that if there could be no life for him in serving the Empire, then there could be no life for him at all. He had retired quietly to one of his family's country estates, a comfortable distance south of Rome.

By then Cassia, no more than twenty-five years old at the time, had been his lover sporadically for several years. He did not have the necessary feelings for her or require her assistance enough to marry her, but thankfully, she did not seem put off by this fact, happily removing herself from her own home in the great city to follow him to the unassuming stillness of the countryside.

Until Quintus had experienced the gentleness of her voice and hands in soothing his aching head and less and less vigorous body, he had not realised what a pleasant and useful creature a woman could be. Cassia, sharp green eyes displaying intelligence her lumbering actions belied, gradually wormed her way into his trust and confidence. He would comb her blonde hair while she sat advising and counselling him, feeling his affection for her grow.

Tonight, however, he thought he felt something missing. For several days, a strange and disarming dream had returned each night, making him rethink his new situation. 

The battlefields of his glory days alongside the General Maximus…the pair of them riding and talking through cold foreign land recently conquered. This was the wonderful part, when the incomparable feeling of pride as Quintus basked in the other man's power and greatness would fill him once more, making him feel young, and valued, once again.

Then a figure up on the horizon, the figure of a frail lone woman. As the distance between the stranger and the two men closed up, Quintus would realise with a surge of horror and disbelief who she was. Her red hair ragged around her pale shoulders; her skin white and grey. Her fine clothes torn, spots of fresh blood flecked across the front of her skirts.

She would start to step towards them, raising her hand as if to make them stop. Quintus would pull automatically on the reins he held, turning his head to see Maximus's reaction. The General would always have disappeared.

Turning back to Lucilla, terrified, Quintus would see her falling to her knees on the ground, cradling her fine head in her hands. When she raised her face to his again, it had changed, but only for the briefest second. Her hair fairer, her features somewhat younger. Eyes large and horribly familiar, piercing shades of green against amber. 

Then he would wake, an odd coldness running up and down his spine. The beautiful lady, fallen. Damaged somehow. No longer the strong, hard-nosed, spellbinding creature she had been. Quintus felt a terrible certainty that what he had glimpsed had happened to her in real life. But who had done that to her? Who had had the power to break her so quickly and easily, and why?

***

Antoninus rose early, before the sunrise, feeling elated as normal. His wife and stepdaughter remained abed, the only sounds coming from the house those of the young Spanish maid Catalina fussing around the kitchen. Sounds of normality and harmony never failed to please Antoninus – he was a man who, all his life, had hated change. As a child, he had much preferred watching his mother caring for his younger sister, than hearing his father voice his great ambitions for his son.

He was absolutely sure that these times, in the countryside, would be the happiest times of his life. First, however, there were a few uncertainties to deal with.

Diana had been worrying him lately, her skin turning pale, as she often disappeared by herself for long periods of time, and emerged looking only slightly healthier. In their bed she was as loving as always, her soft body feeling like a second skin beside his own. She had been born to be his wife, he was certain. Now, his fervent hope was that her illness and malaise was due to her being with child. They had certainly been together often enough to make a baby; now he prayed that his suspicions would prove well founded after three blissful, though barren, years marriage.

Blissful, though not completely. Julia, an endlessly astonishing and pleasant child through all the years Antoninus had known her, had changed upon the advent of her womanhood. 

Now nineteen years old, and a fully-grown adult, she was of an odder and more difficult temperament than any creature he had ever known. Most times, her stepfather would simply brush aside her moods, offering her a sympathetic ear that she consistently, though delicately, refused. Such a lady, without fail. None of Diana's endearing inelegances – so purely and effortlessly graceful. The girl's elusive father _must _have been of noble blood.

The most distressing aspect of it all, however, was the manner in which Julia's mere presence these days seemed disquieting her mother. Once Diana had doted upon her child with an extraordinary (and to Antoninus, unfathomable) intensity. Now she seemed almost to crave liberty from having to care for Julia's welfare any longer.

Turning a piece of fresh bread over in his hands, and thinking with increasing protectiveness of his wife, he checked himself. Of course it could not be that. Diana was no longer a young woman, but still surely capable of bearing him his own children, however satisfied he had been seeing Julia grow to maturity. Her sadness could not possibly be due to her daughter's upsetting as much as he feared.

Mulling over this, Antoninus did not notice light, languid footsteps joining Catalina's in the building behind him. A soft, clipped exchange took place between the two young women, the maid's high-pitched voice responding to Julia's more modulated tones. Then Catalina's disappeared completely, her quick footsteps sounding out to where Antoninus sat as she left Julia alone. Aware now of her presence, her stepfather stood and cautiously entered the small pantry where she lingered, wandering around as if looking for something.

They needed no words. She smiled warmly at him, a potentially heartbreaking expression in her haunting, luminous eyes. As she turned back to her search, he took a seat at the small wooden table one or two feet from where she stood.

"Are you missing something, Julia?"

She turned slightly towards him. "Pardon?"

"Have you lost something?"

"No…I'm fine." She appeared to stop looking then; as usual, an intensely private girl, she was deeply abashed of being observed. "I think I will go for a walk. I shan't be long." 

Before Antoninus could protest, or keep her talking for longer, she left the room and hurried out of the building. Secretive, he thought to himself, though not in quite the same way as Diana could be. Diana wore her worries like amulets around her neck; Julia's preoccupations seemed to elude even herself – as though she knew that a secret was being kept from her, and spent every waking hour fretting over what it could possibly be.

"Did you see anything interesting on your walk today, my dear?" 

Antoninus looked up at his wife, smiling at the first words Diana had spoken since they had sat down to supper. Even Catalina had tried to engage her mistress in conversation as she placed steaming boiled meats on her plate, reflecting just how worried everyone in the household was lately. Only Julia did not seem willing to speak at all, only opening her mouth reluctantly to answer her mother's question.

"Nothing while I was out, Mama. But I did come across something interesting when I came home. I was looking for my needlework…"

Diana lowered her eyes, quickly swallowing the small mouthful of food she had taken. Her hands started to shake slightly as she cut her daughter off in mid-sentence with, "What did you find, exactly?"

"A jewellery box, full of gold and with some paper in the bottom. I only glanced inside; I would never rifle through someone else's belongings."

Diana barely comprehended the fact that Julia had invaded her privacy anyway by finding the box. She only watched the girl's face, increasingly disturbed by the small smile pulling the corners of her mouth – Lucilla's mouth – as surely her memory of those rich things filled her mind. 

"Oh, Julia…" Diana began, thinking fast, though barely able to as a headache began throbbing at her temples. "I know you love things like that…and, well…your stepfather and I would give you all the luxuries in the world if we only could. But do you remember what I told you when you were a little girl? You may aspire to live as those wealthy people do, but it is a hollow world they inhabit."

Julia did not break eye contact with her mother once as the older woman spoke. A small furrow appeared between her beautiful eyes as her lips curled downward slightly. "I understand."

"But anyhow…" Diana continued, "Those jewels are yours."

Antoninus almost choked on a mouthful of vegetables. "My dear, why did you never tell me?"

Julia smiled broadly, as if the moment were a triumph for her. Perhaps it was.

Diana felt a knife-like pain cut through her forehead – guilt manifesting itself as physical pain. She turned towards her husband, reaching for his hand. "I did not think it important enough to trouble you with. I had a cousin, the wife of a senator, who was particularly fond of Julia when she was a baby, and so bequeathed the jewels to her when she died."

"I have wealthy relatives…in Rome?" the girl said, her eyes gleaming.

Julia tried to smile back at her. "Indeed you do." Not a complete lie.

She could hardly contain herself as she looked from her mother to her stepfather. "May I please be excused?"

"Not yet, my dear," Antoninus said firmly. "Finish your dinner. Your mother and Catalina do not slave away cooking for you so that you may starve."

As she dutifully continued eating, Diana felt an odd feeling stirring inside her, almost as if she had been falling. Shaken, she turned back to her husband. "I am afraid I must be excused for a moment. There is something I must do."

Antoninus's having gestured his assent, she rose from her seat and walked swiftly out of the room, trying to still the beating of her heart.

Julia had never been taught to read or write – the only education she had ever received had been in basic housekeeping. As much as Diana wished to share the learning she had acquired from Lucilla's good teaching, Antoninus had assured her repeatedly that there was no need – even saying that such a quality as knowledge would make her unattractive to potential husbands.

Diana agreed completely with this. Above all, she wanted only a normal, respectable life for Julia, and a Roman woman's first step to respectability was to marry, and marry well.

And yet in spite of all this, she found herself rooting out the jewellery box, however reluctantly, and removing Lucilla's diaries. The first time she had read them, only respect for everything that had once been the Princess's had prevented her from burning them. _Why did she want me to find out? _she had asked repeatedly. Then she had realised. Julia was so temperamental, and so confused. At least with understanding of the horrid truth, Diana could have some idea why.

_There is so much royal blood coursing through her, so many good and bad qualities forced together…she can actually feel it. She looks around her and does not see the world where she belongs._

__Diana had heard stories of children, produced by incest, having many things wrong with them. Yet Julia was perfection, at least on the surface. Perfectly sound of mind, and so intelligent, yet underneath all of her beauties, there was such turmoil. Finally, Lucilla's favourite handmaiden understood why the jewellery box had been placed in her care along with the child such an unthinkable situation had produced. Unnatural fruit indeed, yet one that might yet be salvaged, and made right, if nurtured in just the right way.

The diaries had been for Diana. The jewels, each stone and piece of precious metal imprinted with a royal past, were meant for Lucilla's child.

Steeling herself, she took it up into her hand. It was ice cold. Fearing she may drop it, she put it down quickly upon her bed. Her eyes filling with tears, she rethought what she had planned to do. She walked back to the door.

"Catalina! Could you fetch Julia and tell her to come here, please?"

***

There was another world somewhere, perhaps beyond the clouds she could stare at for hours when she lay down on the fields every day. Her mother and stepfather worried, she knew, and talked between themselves about what could be troubling her so badly. Only she couldn't tell them about this – about this world she knew must exist, invisible, untouchable, until a person died and they went there themselves.

Turning over in her bed, Julia smiled to herself, thinking what Diana or Antoninus might think if she told them. _They already think I'm strange. So do the neighbours. If I share this with them, they'll definitely give up on me._

__Antoninus had already spoken to her about her future, about whether she was interested in any of the local boys who called for her frequently, usually to be told that she had gone on one of her extended wanders around the fields. That was the only place where she did not feel stifled, or like a useless member of the household. Apart from perhaps being rich and living in Rome, the situation she longed for above anything else, she would have liked nothing better but to have been able to stay in the fields and never come back. Marriage, she did not think of at all.

It was unheard of for a young woman to ride out a long way by herself, so she was not allowed to take her horse, and was constantly chastised for venturing out too far, either by her mother or that uppity maid, only two years older than Julia herself.

Only when she lay on her back, smelling the vegetation all around her and staring at the perfect blue sky, could she really relax. The countryside itself, apart from the obligations of life on the farm, held an irresistible charm for her. It was here that the theory of the other world had first come to her. All she had needed then was confirmation that such a place was real.

It had first come to her in the dreams. At night, whenever she slept deeply enough, she saw people and places she had never before seen in real life. Images she fought to keep clear in her mind once she awoke, for she was certain they had some significance – that they might point the way for her to escape the monotony of her life at present, to attain that which she knew she was truly meant for.

The jewellery box beneath her bed would be her window to that world. 


	12. XI

The next week, after Diana had completed the business of delivering Lucilla's jewels into her displaced daughter's hands, an o

The following week, after Diana had completed the business of delivering Lucilla's jewels into her displaced daughter's hands, an oppressive, invisible cloud seemed to descend upon their home, seeming to bring everyone down like a plague.

Diana fought continually with her own conscience, vacillating between resentment towards her own malign fate and hatred of herself for feeling that way. She had a wonderful husband, though he must remain forever ignorant of the truth – of _her_ truth. Was she to tell him somehow, not tell him and learn to live with these emotions, or simply be glad for all the beautiful things she now had?

Then there was Julia to contend with. Even more withdrawn, all the time walking out in the fields. Diana could ask herself only one question – why? Since the day the girl had been born, all her guardian had striven to do was make a happy, conventional life for her. If she had succeeded, logically Julia should have grown up contended and accepting of her surroundings. These days, she seemed neither.

Chillingly, she seemed somehow to know as well as Diana did the repugnant truth of her origin, and suffer for it every bit as much as the older woman did. 

"I'm so worried about her, Antoninus. Those fields, every day…"

Her husband usually had a wise answer for all of her questions. Now, all he could do was pull her closer to him, wrapping the bedclothes tighter around them both, trying to ignore how painfully thin she felt pressed against him. She might worry about Julia, but he had both of them to fret about. He did not need to be told now that Diana was most definitely not carrying their child yet.

She, on the other hand, had only one thought troubling her at present. It was one she certainly could not share with him.

Why the fields every day? She was not the General Maximus's child – only the product of an unthinkable attack. The thought made bile rise up in her throat, even after all this time. So many questions she should have asked that broken, violated lady as she lay on what would become her deathbed, dragging themselves through Diana's mind like thorny vines, tearing her sanity to pieces.

"I worry about her too, my darling. Every day, I worry so much. I could not love her more if she were my own."

_Neither could I, _Diana thought bitterly.

"I want only what is best for her…"

"What is best for her is to get married and settle down," Diana interjected, almost angrily. She checked herself then swiftly. _Never hate her. She is still Lucilla's child, still that priceless creature you raised in that building by yourself. Never hate her for what is not her fault…where she came from._

__"Of course," Antoninus said softly. "Only she keeps the rest of the world at a distance, when she could find a boy so easily."

Diana forced a smile at that. Somehow, when the girl only appeared in public if she absolutely had to, she received so much attention, had so many admirers. Her loveliness and grace seemed to be common knowledge for miles around.

"There are some good young men among them, too," Antoninus continued. "But does she ever speak about them to you, my dear?" 

"Never. She behaves as though they do not exist." A thought suddenly came into her mind. "Might she already have a lover, in secret, do you think?" It was a hopeful possibility – by any means possible, Julia needed to find a husband to tame her strange, silently headstrong disposition.

Antoninus gave a low, slightly cynical chuckle. "In all honesty, I do not think she truly notices those boys at all. That is one thing so upsetting about all of this: even were she to recognise what was the right path for her to take, I doubt she would know what was expected of her as a wife. May I ask you something, my dear?"

"Anything." She nuzzled his bare chest, infinitely comforted by his closeness and ceaseless love for her.

"How did you react when you were first married to Julia's father? You know, to your…duties?"

Her heart lurched, even before her mind could cast itself back. This was one question she had no prepared answer for.

"I…was rather shocked at first. I was very young and naïve." Her throat seemed to tighten then, cutting off any further explanation.

Luckily, Antoninus left it at that, merely hugging her close to him again. They lay in silence for several moments, listening to the sounds of night outside the villa. Eventually, he spoke up again, this time tentatively.

"Darling, there is something more I think I must tell you tonight."

Automatically, she was filled with dread. "What is it? Is it Julia?"

"…Yes, it is. She asked me a favour, a rather large one, this afternoon. It appears she has a longing to return to Rome, to live for a while."

"Oh…oh," Her breath cut off almost completely.

First her fascination with the fields, now Rome. _Her roots are calling her…calling her home. Why did I not keep her there, where she belonged?_

"Did she tell you why she wishes to go?"

"Only that she wishes to see it again. I think she has grown bored with the countryside. Personally, I am surprised it took her this long to realise." His tone changed from light-hearted to grave. "I thought to ignore her at first, just to hope that it was a passing fancy. Then she made me promise that I would discuss it with you."

Diana was glad for the darkness enveloping them, making her face invisible. For a torrent of tears was fighting to escape – both at the prospect of Julia leaving them, and dread of what may happen if they refused to let her go.

Together, they made the impossible decision. It was arranged: Antoninus would take Julia to Rome on the pretext of a visit, leaving Diana to oversee the farm by herself for a short while. Even had she been able to accompany them, her health had recently taken a turn for the worse, and she spent much of her time abed. The spectre of the fever that had almost taken her life thirteen years ago remained unabated.

On the eve of the day father and daughter were due to leave, Diana and Antoninus made love until the early hours of the morning, when they both crept out to the spot where she had first agreed to marry him, lying entwined in the long grasses, awaiting the sunrise.

"When will you come back?" she asked him, her voice choked.

"Soon. Do not worry about that. She was raised here in the country; she will tire of the city soon enough."

"And if she does not? Then what will we do with her?"

"If she will not find employment somehow, she will have to get married. Once she is settled in Rome, I will come home to you."

Diana grimaced. _This is wicked of me. I should not be happy when she may well leave us._

__Yet she was the last member of a royal dynasty. Not only that, some barely-tapped part of her being knew it. _That is it, then. Rome is her world; she belongs to the centre of the Empire. So she was born of an evil, unnatural act – at least she will never find out about it. All she will ever know is that in Rome is where she is happiest. That will do no harm to her._

__"We are doing the right thing in this, aren't we?" She gripped her husband suddenly, staring into his eyes as they filled with concern for her.

"Of course we are! This is what she wants, so it must come to some good end for her. If it does, we will visit her often when she is wed. If it does not, I will bring her back home." He glanced up, the first rays of golden sunlight on the horizon making him squint, and hold Diana to him even more tightly. "The day is finally here. The day we knew would come eventually."

Painfully, her eyes moist with the beginnings of tears, Diana extricated herself from his embrace and stood up, squaring her shoulders to face the day. "I did not quite envision these circumstances. I suppose I should go and wake her, then."

Antoninus took hold of her arm again. "Not so quickly, my dear. I suspect she is already awake."

No sooner had Antoninus and Julia left, than Diana wished with all her heart she had never let the girl out of her sight. Once the cart carrying her husband and daughter away from her had disappeared over the grassy horizon, she had immediately taken to her bed, refusing all of Catalina's anxious requests for her to take some food. 

The pillow beneath her soaked with hot tears, sleep eluded her for many hours, until finally a trance-like stupor took hold, heavy and inescapable as a shroud made of iron. The dreaming began in small, horrifying snatches, the sort of which she had not experienced since Julia had been a baby.

Her mother, that ignorant shrew, appearing before her again, looking down upon her with a disgusted expression. Diana felt tiny and terrified, before realising that she was reliving her own childhood. Then her father, taking a whip to her for every small offence he deemed inexcusable. The tears streaming down her face, the stinging pain in her back and buttocks, as she heard her own voice ringing out, shrieking, calling for her older sister who was long since dead of the plague. 

Their mother had almost died also. Diana felt cold stone beneath her knees, small, tender knees, and the smell of incense in her nose – she was praying, praying for her mother to die. _My father was not a bad man – she made him bad, she told him to hit us. _When her mother had survived, when she had been allowed to live where in years gone by all of Diana's siblings had perished, leaving her all alone, the little girl had sworn to make her family pay.

As she writhed in her sleep, trapped by these images flashing beneath her closed eyelids, she wondered if she was dying. _I am seeing my whole life, all my mistakes. Is this death? What did Lucilla see when she was leaving me?_

The visions became a little lighter, a little clearer. Twelve years old, and dressing and behaving as a grown woman, she felt a euphoria washing through her like cool water. This was the moment she had become resolved to punish her mother, perhaps the only way a highborn young Roman lady could punish her influential family: by dishonouring herself, and therefore them.

The boy had not been difficult to find – the son of an advisor to Emperor Marcus Aurelius himself, who had been paying court to her for almost two years already. In recent years, even when she had been willing to, it had been near impossible for Diana to conjure these memories – now they were crystal clear: his pouting and impatience at her initial coyness, then his expression of equal parts shock and delight when she had finally agreed to succumb to him.

The horror of childbirth made her blood run cold afresh now as it replayed itself. The child had been taken away immediately after, but that had never mattered to her. It had not been easy, as it was when Lucilla had borne Julia – far from it. The surgeons informed her raging parents that their ruined child was badly torn, so would most probably never deliver again.

Thirteen years old, with no chances of making a good marriage now seeing as she was barren. The disgrace of her prestigious lineage. With one last thrashing from her father, she was quietly placed into the service of the newly married Princess of Rome, never to meet any of her relatives again.

Roused at last from this appalling montage of her young life, Diana might have smiled, recognising the irony that it had been within her darkest hour that the happiest time of her existence, by Lucilla's side, had been initiated. Yet it was impossible to take any comfort from this, knowing that the dreams could only have foretold something terrible for Julia. 

_I rushed to let her go, and this is my punishment. Oh, sweet lady, I have failed you, as I always knew I would._

_ _

***

Julia lay resting in the back of Antoninus's cart as they searched for somewhere to stop for the night, caught between sleep and wakefulness, occasionally making soft murmuring sounds that her stepfather could clearly hear, so clear and silent was the land all around the road they occupied.

Periodically, he peered backwards at her, always seeing her petite figure curled like a foetus, her head wrapped in her favourite linen palla and supported by a bundle of her clothing. She was a beauty, most definitely – though a strange, sometimes cruel one. Not at all like her mother, he thought; so fair and exotically lovely of face whereas Diana was of a more classic, restrained prettiness. His wife was always so eager, also, to put others before herself. 

Sometimes he wondered whether she might be constantly seeking to make up for some past selfishness. That, he had accepted, he was probably never to know the truth about.

Julia was selfless also, but often in an inadequate manner. She always tried to help where she could, but her efforts never seemed to lead to anything, and she always appeared to hate herself for it afterwards. Then would come a long dry spell, wherein she never tried to assist anyone. Antoninus had once heard Catalina muttering to a young male stable hand, "That young lady will never be fit for a mistress of a villa. She should have been born a princess, all proud and graceful like she is."

Antoninus had laughed at this, albeit bitterly. His biggest fear had been touched upon: that there truly was no place for Diana's refined little daughter in this land of mere mortals.

Spotting what appeared to be a small village up ahead of them, he began pulling on the horses' reins to slow them. As he did, he heard Julia's drowsy mumblings turn to more pronounced, coherent speech. What could she be dreaming about?

At that moment, one of the cart's wheels passed over a large rock, jolting the young woman out of her cosy position. Her head banged against the wood beside her, and she opened her eyes, moaning at the brief pain ensuing. 

"Are you all right, my dear?" he asked, leaning closer to where she lay.

"I am, thank you," she sat up quickly, straightening her clothes and the wrapping around her hair, ever ladylike and conscious of her appearance. "Where did he go?" She looked around, genuinely confused.

"Where did who go?"

"The man in the armour, carrying the sword…a soldier, I think. He just walked right next to us, as I was waking up. He bowed his head and smiled at me."

Bewildered, Antoninus thought back; there could have been no such soldier. The area had been perfectly silent and empty but for themselves. 

"What did he look like, may I ask?"

"Slightly dark skin, short hair. Kind eyes…I know it is strange, but he seemed to know me. I…think I have seen him before, at home."

"A soldier, at home? I think you were dreaming just now, my dear, and you mistook the connection between the man at home. There are no soldiers in the countryside. I like to think I know everyone there."

Antoninus now had his back turned to her, focusing on the road ahead. But from the sound of Julia's indignant sniff, he could tell she was hurt by his dismissal.

"Rest a little more, my dear," he said softly. "It will be a long journey before we reach Rome. This is an unreliable route."

"I know it. I have travelled it before."

Irritated by the petulance in her voice, he went on, "Yes, when you were a child. Now put your head down for a few minutes. I will wake you when we arrive in a place to settle for the night."

He heard her lie down dutifully again. Then, almost whispering, she added, "I did not imagine that man. I could not have imagined him twice."


	13. XII

Chapter 13

The villa Antoninus procured for them to live in was small, cramped, but would serve until such a time as he was able to return to Diana. That is, when Julia fulfilled her part of the unspoken pact between them, and found some purpose for herself here in Rome.

Poverty, even the subdued kind she and her mother had endured before they moved to the countryside, was unacceptable to her stepfather. Their new home lacked some amenities, yet still would have appeared as a palace to the peasants enduring worse urban squalor. They had no servants bar a young man paid to care for their horses and a maid, both allowed to live within the villa with them, if discreetly. 

Though she needn't have, Julia soon learned the arts of housekeeping, to Antoninus's great relief, without complaint. However, much of the time she clearly had other things to distract her; other purposes for her stay in the great city.

Since their arrival, she had pandered him almost constantly to accompany her into the more populated, lively areas of the city, where she absorbed her surroundings as easily as a sponge absorbs water. Seeing how dramatically her spirits rose as a result of these outings, however, her stepfather could not complain. He loved her so much that her happiness became his happiness; he wanted only to keep her smiling for as long as possible.

"What do you want out of your life, Julia?" he asked her one morning, as she led the way through a dusty marketplace, collecting necessities like a second nature.

The question slowed her pace as she walked ahead of him, her basket sliding a little down her slender arm. "I do not know." 

They spoke no more of her future then. Only when they reached a small café in which to take their midday meal did Antoninus realise what a sore nerve he had touched within her. She chewed on expensive sweetmeats half-heartedly, refusing a course of meat and vegetables altogether. He could afford to feed and clothe her richly, but not as richly as she would have liked, he feared.

Some days, he found himself utterly shocked at the amount of independence she asserted, and at the downright coldness she often displayed to others, including him. But this was only one side of the coin; she could be so warm and doting sometimes, she brought tears to his eyes he had to fight to conceal. Finding a husband to tolerate her many facets would prove nightmarish.

"Have you found everything we need for the house?" he queried, needing to distract her obviously melancholy thoughts somehow. 

"Everything, except for the bread. And I would like some sewing materials." She brought a cloth up to her face to wipe away a few crumbs, and as she did, her stepfather caught sight of an exquisite signet ring on her delicate middle finger. It caused his breathing to freeze for a moment. Never, in either Julia's possession or her mother's, had he encountered such a beautiful specimen of jewellery. It looked entirely as though it had once belonged to royalty.

Then it occurred to him: the box Diana had handed down to the girl, the former possession of the elusive Roman cousin. 

The thought of Julia's now owning the box made him oddly uncomfortable as he stared at the ring. She was so curious, and always had been, about the lives of people in classes higher than their own. He, more than anyone, knew how empty and corrupt those lives could be – he had voluntarily abandoned his own chances in their world. The girl was too impressionable. His only hope was that her fascination would never tempt her into trouble.

***

Julia retired late that night, changing her clothes and conversing briefly with the maid before sinking into her bed. All day, she had been filled with a strange excitement, caused only by the effect of Roman air upon her, she was certain. The activity of the areas where she had walked with Antoninus that day, the prosperity and grandeur all around her, left her almost too edgy to go to sleep.

When she finally closed her eyes, however, she dreamed so vividly that even in unconsciousness she was aware of the frenzied pounding of her heart. 

The dull linen of the night dress she wore turned to something fine and soft against her skin, making her shiver. The air around her smelled of sweetest perfume, better than any natural aroma she had ever smelled in the countryside. In front of her eyes was a blurred fusion of colours and indistinct objects and faces. The only sounds were of whispering voices. This surreal, sensuous awareness all at once terrified and excited her more than anything ever had.

Her vision came into focus as a beautiful, tall, imposing and yet gentle female figure stood before her, holding out two slender arms. Julia's heart seemed to stop beating as she stared at the woman, unsure of what to do.

This was more than an average rich Roman lady – she was an empress, or at the very least a princess. Her face was long and unlined, framed with flowing auburn curls, her pale skin dotted with tiny freckles. Her smile and eyes spoke volumes of affection, to Julia's pleasure and bewilderment. 

For once, she barely noticed what the woman wore – her usual fixation when it came to women of higher station than herself. Feelings began to fill her that were completely alien, though extremely agreeable. She tried to rise to accept the beautiful woman's proffered embrace, but could not. Reaching instead for the small white hands to hold them, she caught sight of a signet ring on one of the fingers.

"I know that…" she thought quickly, before another startling thought occurred to her. This woman might have been an older version of herself; in sunlight, Julia's hair turned coppery also. Her skin sometimes showed freckles, when it was not ivory pale. That smile…was hers. This woman could have been…her mother.

The next day, occupying herself by baking cakes for Antoninus to sell, she thought of the woman in her dream, and of the last gesture that the woman had made: placing her fingers to her lips, as if telling Julia to be quiet. Oftentimes she had bored her stepfather to distraction with tales of the odd things she saw in her dreams, however this one, she consequently surmised, was probably best kept to herself.

"Put those things down, Annia!" Julia shrieked, shock and possessiveness cutting through her as she saw the maid's small body bent over the open box.

The girl jumped to her feet, an expression of terror and remorse twisting her plain face. "I am so sorry, Miss, but it was not I who took your jewels out…"

"Who else could it have been?" Julia pushed past the maid roughly, gathering up the few priceless trinkets as calmly as her rage would allow. "You are paid to keep this house clean, not to rummage through other people's belongings! I can have my stepfather turn you out of our home for this! Whatever were you thinking?"

Annia edged towards the door of her young mistress's bedchamber, tears of alarm and dismay at her own bad luck filling her eyes. She was surprised at Julia's temper, having never witnessed it before. The young woman was usually so good and amiable when handling servants – yet now it appeared that her character was somewhat divided.

"I tell no lie, Miss…I merely came in to turn down your bed for this evening, and found your things scattered across it, so I stopped to admire them…"

"Did you attempt to steal anything?" Julia hissed, counting the treasures in her hands. They were all there, bar the signet ring she now wore, the only one of them splendid and yet tasteful enough to wear around this more provincial sector of Rome without being gossiped about.

"No…Miss, I realise that I have no right to accuse anyone, but..."

"Oh, be silent now, girl, and go back to your quarters. I will complete your duties myself."

"Yes, Miss." Annia hurried, without another word, from the room, leaving Julia feeling peculiar. Somehow, she could believe that Annia, a girl so nervous she was hardly brave enough to open a drawer in order to clean in, had told the truth about having found the box already open.

That meant that the only other person who could have come into her room, taken out her jewels, and laid them in a perfect circle, was Antoninus. Unless, of course, a ghost had invaded her privacy and toyed with her most prized possessions.

To bring in some extra income for running the villa, and also to distract herself from thoughts of her increasingly bizarre dreams, Julia took to travelling to nearby houses to do needlework for others. Her proudest accomplishment, and one of the few creative skills she had been permitted to learn, was her sewing. It calmed her whenever she felt agitated for no clear reason, which was often. It put her too-small hands and nimble fingers to some good use. 

But most importantly, to her, it brought her into contact with many different and fascinating people, and in the process opened her eyes to the wider world.

One morning in particular, when the sun beating mercilessly down upon the city signalled the start of yet another glorious summer, she found herself in the entrance hallway to a rather impressive residence, meeting with none other than the lady of the house herself. The wife, Julia gathered with a feeling of growing insignificance, of a senator or a man of property.

"Good morning, my dear," the red-haired woman greeted her warmly. "If you will follow me through here I will show you the garments I would like you to mend. Then we will discuss payment."

For some reason she could not fathom at that moment, Julia felt incredibly at home in this grand house, far too opulent, it seemed, for this less prosperous if not poverty-stricken area. Everyone was aware of the rigid class system within the great city, so why did these people choose to live here?

Julia followed her hostess into the large sitting room, where she tried her hardest not to stare at the plush furnishings and adornments. Immediately, the lady before her began speaking, a little too loudly, holding up a selection of rich, well-worn gowns which needed Julia's attention. However, the young seamstress was unable to listen properly, for she had caught the eye of the only other person in the room with them.

Sat with her legs up on a long couch, a girl, roughly Julia's age, stared into her eyes with a curiously vacant expression and a serene smile. Startled, Julia wondered why her hostess had failed to yet introduce them. Then she realised: this was a daughter, of a marriageable age and yet…mentally unwell, and so remaining at home. This explained the obscure situation of their home, away from high society, which would be critical of them should their sick child be seen by the world.

The silent young girl's mother, having finished explaining Julia's job, finally turned to her. "And this is my daughter, Flavia. She would like to sit with you here, while you work, if that will not bother you?"

Julia ventured a friendly smile in Flavia's direction, which was vaguely returned. "Of course not."

The woman smiled, starting to walk from the room, her back straight and her bearing undeniably noble. "I will send a servant in later with some food for you. Don't be too noisy, Flavia, my dear."

Julia sat to her work somewhat stiffly, acutely aware of Flavia's large, impassive eyes upon her. After thirty minutes at least of strained silence, she decided to try and begin a conversation.

"Do you like to sew?" She glanced up at the girl across the huge room, careful to keep her head bowed so as to seem naturally curious.

"No," Flavia replied after a pause, her perfectly modulated voice belying her supposed mental deficit. "Mother does not allow me to use needles, for I may hurt myself, she says. I like to read instead the books my father gives me."

Julia was surprised, for a number of reasons. Flavia's voice was nothing short of beautiful; tuneful, with only a slight slur to its tones to give away her condition. Not only that, she could _read; at some point in her life, someone had educated her to an extent. Jealousy sprang up, unbidden, inside Julia. The one thing she desired more than anything in life, more than happiness in marriage or a good home or children, was education. These were scandalous thoughts for a woman in these times._

"Oh? Who taught you to read, may I ask?"

"My father. When my brother and sisters were all married, it was wonderful. We sat here for hours and he taught me to read myths and histories, so that I would not be bored. I will never get married, you see."

As her hands worked fast at her stitching, Julia's concentration became fearsome. Did a woman have to be simple-minded and a spinster to deserve the great privilege, as she saw it, of literacy? She had little time to dwell upon this, however, as Flavia began to speak again.

"I make up my own stories, as well. I make some of them up out of my dreams. Do you have dreams, Julia?"

Unable to suppress a sudden sense of relief washing over her, Julia lifted her gaze to the other girls smiling, inoffensive expression, grinning back at her. Finally, a chance to unburden herself!

"I dream almost every night, of wonderful, frightening things."

Flavia laughed suddenly, a melodious, uplifting sound. It was no wonder, Julia realised, that her parents did not shut the girl away into her room, as many other patrician pillars of society may have done to protect their own reputations. She was clearly a very pleasant creature to encounter.

"How can something be wonderful and frightening at the same time?" 

"Well," Julia began, placing the sumptuous half-repaired fabrics down in her lap, "Imagine something you dream about constantly, like a place where you wished dearly that you could live. Then imagine one night that you dream about it again, only this time it seems completely real. You are frightened, but it is wonderful to be there at last, at the same time."

"I understand. How marvellous that would be! What sort of things do you see in your dreams?"

Julia suddenly felt unable to contain her secrets any longer. "Of a very rich place, like a palace, where I am a princess, I think. I see a woman, a beautiful, red-lady just like your mother."

"Oh," Flavia gushed, closing her eyes to picture the scenario. "Please tell me more!"

The other person Julia had dreamt about was somewhat more difficult to discuss. For not only had she seen, and _sensed him, in her incredibly lucid dreams, his appearances to her had extended into her daily life. To speak out loud about him was to admit that she was probably as strange as her stepfather and their neighbours seemed to think she was._

Nonetheless, perhaps she may gain some peace of mind from confessing. Flavia opened her eyes again, their grey, trusting depths full of expectation.

"I dream of a man…I see him in many different situations. I think he is a soldier. Sometimes he is riding across enormous fields, dressed in rags, other times he is dressed all in armour and furs, walking over grounds covered with snow. In some foreign country, I think. He seems to be looking for something."

"Perhaps he is a guardian from another life, like a kinsman or an ancestor," Flavia charitably offered up by way of explanation. "My grandmother used to sit with me, and tell me that since her father had died, he had guarded her from the afterlife. Do you believe in that?"

Julia was momentarily struck dumb by that thought. A guardian from another life. A memory of Diana surfaced, from their days of poverty in that tiny apartment, telling her about her father dying before she was born.

Her father…

Warmth began to rise up to her cheeks, a broad smile settling upon her lips. The handsome soldier from her dreams was her father – he had to be. Now her purpose in her so-far empty life would be to discover his identity.


	14. XIII

At the market stall where Antoninus daily sold his wares, he watched Julia's cakes disappear 

At the market stall where Antoninus daily sold his wares, he watched Julia's cakes disappear with pride, and guessed at what she may be doing at that moment. Sewing, probably. Daydreaming, most definitely. 

The day was cool and sunny: a deceptively pleasant setting for the misfortunes which would result from this seemingly ordinary day's events. Trying to read his stepdaughter's mind distracted him momentarily from the scrutiny of a fellow trader in a stall several yards opposite Antoninus's.

A throng of noisy customers clustered and moved in between the two men's positions for several minutes before Marius, smiling smugly to himself, was able to catch the eye of Diana's husband. So many years without being able to spy on her, and follow her as he once had, before that day when he had first confronted Antoninus as that man had been on his way to a tryst with the brown-eyed lady.

What good fortune that Antoninus, the pottery seller, was back in Rome at long last. Surely he would be with Diana, having married her. Even a creature with such loose morals as hers, Marius construed, would desire to be made an honest woman sooner or later. The thought made him want to laugh out loud with mirth. If she had truly returned to the great city, he could barely wait to inspect the transformation from the callow girl he had known to dexterous wife and mother. It would be interesting, too, to see what had become of that charming little daughter of hers.

He no longer loved Diana, or even cared for her, if indeed he ever had. They had been no more than children when she had first fascinated and then seduced him. Amateurs in the game of passion. He barely understood what was drawing him back to her now, bar the pull of some kind of destiny, whatever it was to be.

Antoninus's eyes definitely harboured some curiosity as Marius held them with his own, though they soon fell away indifferently. Marius was not surprised; thirteen years previously, when they had first met, he himself had been a man of some consequence, as his appearance had proved. Now, the veritable rags and unkempt beard he wore were bound to conceal his identity.

These days, he was more sympathetic when thinking of his ruined little jewel, Diana. For she had not been the only one to fall from the heights of Roman society, after all.

***

The night turned cool and crisp, and Antoninus strode home smiling with satisfaction, nursing a bag full of that day's takings. Nodding to friends passing by, he remained oblivious to the pair of shrewd eyes fixed upon him as he approached his villa, the building mottled with dying sunlight passing through the trees around it. Only when he drew close the front door, shrouded in violet darkness, could he make out the figure of the other gentleman lounging against the brick wall.

Disconcerted, he took a couple of steps backward, swiftly hiding his money beneath his belt. "May I help you, sir?"

The other man smiled broadly. "Perhaps. Is your wife at home today?"

Antoninus vaguely recognised the voice and its arrogant impertinence, but could not pinpoint when and where from at that moment. "I don't think that is any of your business. Might we introduce ourselves before we begin exchanging confidences?"

The stranger seemed to have no qualms about revealing his identity. "My name is Marius, sir. Your name I know – it appears that you are rather a pillar of the community in these parts already. May I ask, sir, after the beauty I encountered as she entered your home earlier? Is she your daughter?"

"My stepdaughter. Julia is the daughter of my wife Diana from her first marriage."

Marius chuckled heartily. "Married, and for a second time! I could never have predicted it." For the first time, he noted Antoninus's disbelieving expression laced with building anger. "Forgive me, sir. Your wife and I were once acquaintances, in our childhoods. I apologise if I have inconvenienced you, and bid you goodnight."

With that, he bowed slightly and departed, walking quickly as if he had some important matter to deal with elsewhere. Antoninus stood speechless, detesting his own memory for letting this person slip. He swore he remembered the man, and the name, from years ago, and indeed associated with Diana. 

His head swimming with confusion and some anger, he stepped into the villa and locked the door securely behind him. This Marius has called Julia a 'beauty', he suddenly recalled with a surge of worry and protectiveness – might he pose some danger to her? His comments about her mother had suggested disrespect for their lineage, or indeed all women, at the very least.

The house was silent, but for the sound of Annia and the stable boy chattering in the pantry. It was still fairly light; Julia was fond of taking her pony out into the fields early in the evening. Antoninus was completely unprepared for the sight of her occupying the main sitting room, poring over a parchment containing his household accounts.

She did not see or hear him stood outside the alcove, or feel his eyes watching her, so intently was she concentrating. Her stepfather felt a catch at his heart, seeing her elegant hand toy with the edges of the paper slowly as her eyes glistened with frustration. She wore a new palla around her shoulders, embroidered with silver and red. Still that signet ring glittered on her finger.

More than anything, she longed to be able to read, he knew. Yet he could not yield to her most fervent wish for fear of spoiling the best future she could hope for as a woman: to secure a good man to marry her.

_But she is no ordinary woman! So silent, so graceful, adorning herself like this and walking as though she were a Princess of the Empire. _

He could ask the sons of his friends to visit her to speed up the whole process, but some invisible force steadfastly held him back. Part of him knew very well that her true destiny was quite different, and that should it be thwarted, she would wilt like a tropical flower denied water.

***

For Quintus, nightfall was the most depressing time of day, when the rooms of his family's country estate, long since emptied of the many children and servants that its passageways had once swarmed with, would fill with ominous darkness. He and Cassia now lived there alone, with few luxuries, subsisting on only Cassia's allowance from her family since his career had ground finally to a devastating stop. 

He felt his advancing age like a pox creeping over him, as he trod through a candlelit passageway of the great old house. He remained fully mobile physically, and as mentally sharp as ever, yet his dreams of the past aged his soul even beyond his mortal years. In the dreams, he was a young man once more, free of all ties and allegiances bar those he willingly assumed: his honourable admiration for the General Maximus, and his love for the Lady Lucilla. Neither had ever died within him, even now.

This estate was empty of every kind of life that had ever meant anything to him. There was no profession for him, and no hero beyond the long-dead General for him to worship. No honest love since the one woman he ever might have shared it with was likewise given to Elysium. Even ordinary domesticity was an impossible dream, seeing as Cassia had failed to give him a child whom he might cherish.

Tentatively, as if it were as airy as one of his dreams and might disappear just as quickly, he brushed his fingers against a bust of his father, one of a line of his predecessors standing along the passage. That man, perishing not long after Marcellus had been killed, had been lucky, his younger son now realised. Both he and his luckless heir had been more fortunate than they could have known.

_It's a dream. A frightful dream…life is._

_Quintus pressed his palm hard against his own mouth, stilling his breathing for a moment. The feeling of increasing pressure inside his head actually seemed pleasant. He realised that he could easily, and with little discomfort, take his own life. Allowing himself to breath once more, his balled his fist and rammed it into his forehead. It would be a simple end to his misery, should nothing arrive within this life to alleviate it._

That night brought little sleep for him, only contemplations of what should be done with his family's belongings after his death, and how he would provide for Cassia. It was only fair that the sweet, though unremarkable woman should be thanked for her loyalty over her long, monotonous years as his paramour, particularly seeing as he had neglected to ever make her his bride. No doubt, she blamed her infertility for this, and seemed to accept her fate without bearing Quintus any grudge.

The morning was perversely beautiful; it seemed to taunt him as he walked the grounds of the estate, his mood lying as heavily upon him as it had the previous evening. Cassia found much to occupy her, the consummate mistress of the land even as she had no ties, legal or otherwise, to hold her to it. Her lover found himself avoiding her, wishing for company, but not hers.

He was approaching the sparse copse of fruit trees nearby when he reluctantly turned his eyes back to the house, and glimpsed immediately the figure of a young woman. From where he stood, her figure seemed small, though the details of her were startlingly clear, even down to her small feet treading lightly around the courtyard. Her face, framed by tendrils of golden-red hair spilling from the palla she wore, was tilted upwards. She was openly admiring his house.

Quintus might have been angered by any other person's trespassing on his property, but this woman seemed to draw him to her, against his own staunchly proud and restrained nature. For a moment, he remained where he stood, watching her progress and feeling his resolve seep gradually away. This was not just another beauty; this girl was extraordinary. Her power made itself felt even from this distance between them. Part of him screamed out that he had met her before.

The Gods had placed her in his proximity for a reason. In that second his melancholy was gone, replaced at long last by optimism and purpose.

***

Julia wondered at the beautiful formation of the old house for a long time, cursing herself when she realised how much time she had wasted. These roads were miles off her daily route to the houses where she usually went to offer her needlework for sale; she barely even remembered why she had decided to walk so far. The rich estate had caught her eye from a distance, and tantalised more than her fascination for wealth and splendour; she felt almost as though she had once lived within it.

Before she knew what she was doing, she found herself stood within the courtyard of the building, inching closer towards the outer walls. An odd and yet wonderful feeling overcame her as she gaped at the marble and stone, while at the same time censuring herself for such silliness. Trailing her fingers across them made her shiver, as if out of delighted surprise that the place was solid and real.

In her state of almost suspended reality, she failed to notice that more than one pair of bewildered eyes had come to rest upon her. By the time a servant of the house's owner had approached to ask the reason for her presence, she may as well have been a million miles away. Inside her head, all the strange dreams she had ever had, of the red-haired lady and the royal palace, were returning to haunt her. The feeling was exhilarating to her.

"Madam?"

Didius was suddenly stupefied by the startled pair of wide amber eyes that swung round to gaze at him. Their visitor had clearly been as unprepared for the sight of him as he had been for that of her.

"I'm so sorry!" she floundered, looking at the basket hanging from one slender white arm. "I did not mean to trespass! I was merely admiring the building…"

"Oh, well, there is no harm done, Madam; I was only wondering if you had any particular business with my master. If you do not, you may leave…"

"Unless, Madam, you would prefer to come inside to take refreshment with me?" The voice was deep and authoritative, although laced with an anxiety which puzzled Julia. She turned to face the other gentleman, certainly the master of the servant with whom she had been speaking, and saw that his expression was bewilderingly timid. She could not recall ever having inspired such a reaction in a man before, except for the numerous times she had received bungling marriage proposals from local boys. 

The question left her struck dumb momentarily. As used to speaking with strangers as she was, this particular one made her feel strange. She felt she should accept his invitation out of politeness, and yet was somehow shaken by the sight of him. 

"I do not know if I should. Please do not go to any trouble to accommodate me…"

"Nonsense!" The man swallowed after he said the word, reaching out to take her small, tender hand in his thin, haggard one. Bowing, he introduced himself: "My name is Quintus, and you are welcome to join me in my home. Didius, if you will lead our guest inside?"

Julia followed the servant into the house in awestruck silence. She had not yet disclosed to him her name, but was being treated as a friend. Her gut instinct told her that she was not in any danger…as yet. What she did sense was something very important preparing to happen, and the feeling of anticipation was as exciting to her as it was terrifying.


	15. XIV

Once inside Quintus's home, Julia quickly found herself face-to-face with her hostess: a middle-aged though still very attract

Once inside Quintus's home, Julia quickly found herself face-to-face with her hostess: a middle-aged, though still very attractive woman, clearly held firmly under the thumb of her husband. The woman, whom Quintus failed to introduce, disappeared the very second he ordered her to tend to some duties elsewhere. Julia's pleasant smile of greeting was completely ignored, which disheartened and then frightened her; was this man in the habit of inviting young women into his home?

If anyone had seen her enter this house, she knew that her reputation would be left in tatters. Ladies were barely even allowed to travel without male escorts as she usually, and very bravely, did. Antoninus loved her dearly, as he regularly proved, but was simply not forceful enough in his discipline. Diana would certainly have ordered them straight back home, were there any way for her to know of all the things he allowed her daughter to do unsupervised.

Julia sat in a veritable daze, perched upon a couch covered in some fine fabric she could not name. All around her was splendour and luxury the likes of which she had never expected to see. When a young female servant offered her refreshment, she was barely able to touch the little sweetmeats held out to her, let alone to bite into one of them. The oddest thing about the experience was that she did not feel scared or nervous in the slightest; only the strangest sense of _belonging to a place such as this._

Quintus did not stop smiling and offering compliments, causing her to almost laugh with gratitude. The stern demeanour he had possessed upon first meeting her had completely disappeared, leaving a character totally unlike any wealthy gentleman she had ever met. He was plainly striving to make her as comfortable as possible – or could be possibly be delaying the inevitable revelation of her identity?

"You are really too kind, sir! I cannot stay and impose upon you any longer…"

"Of course you can! Or do you have any other more pressing engagements?"

His eyes, genuine and welcoming, would not allow her to be dishonest. "No, I do not. I have completed my errands for the day."

"Would your husband disapprove of your being here?"

Julia felt her face burning. Her determination not to marry had attached to her an inevitable stigma, though once again, she could not force herself to lie. "No, sir. I have no husband."

Quintus's eyes flashed with interest she was too immature to recognise. He smiled. "Your father?"

"My father is dead, though my stepfather will be at market all today, trading. I was to return home at once, though we do employ a maid who will care for the house in my absence."

"So there is no problem. Didius! Leave us, if you will."

Watching the manservant's back as he made his exit from the large room, Julia felt the beginnings of trepidation in the pit of her stomach. Turning her eyes demurely down to her hands, she waited for an explanation from her host.

"I do not like to be waited upon constantly, Madam. You need not worry; you are quite safe in my company. In the army I was considered very trustworthy, I assure you." 

She raised her eyes with curiosity. "You were a soldier, sir?"

"I was. A rose to the rank of Second to a general, no less."

"Oh, I see!" Julia swallowed. She had never seen a soldier before. That is, if the dark-skinned, kind-eyed man in armour who haunted her dreams as well as some of her waking visions did not count. A sudden nervousness gripped her. She wanted to know more of Quintus's past career, as if understanding this real, fleshy soldier man would also be to fathom her ghostly 'father'. 

Yet she knew it to be grossly impolite, however, for a lady to speak unless first spoken to in the presence of a kind stranger. 

The servant who had earlier served sweetmeats re-entered the room, after a short silence, making Julia jump. 

She had to hold her breath then to keep from gasping, as the young girl served a goblet of wine to her master, before offering a smaller amount to Julia. She raised her shocked gaze to Quintus, who sat frowning at his servant, making the girl promptly disappear. The goblet was left in front of Julia.

"Oh, my," Quintus said earnestly. "You must excuse my servant; she is of lowly origin. I suppose you think it abominable of me to allow her to offer wine to a lady?" Still, he did not move to extricate the goblet from her reach.

Julia was dumbstruck. Unable to prevent herself from doing so, she extended a hand to touch the tiny engraved figures on the side of the container, smiling at the feel of the cold metal. It might be her only chance to touch such a rich object, she thought, even as she realised how foolish the gesture must look.

She did not look up in time to see Quintus smiling at her wondering expression. "Feel free, my dear. I will tell no one."

Chuckling, she lifted the goblet to her lips, tentatively tasting the cool, sweet liquid. It stung her throat as she swallowed, and she took another larger mouthful, surprised to enjoy the sensation. Then, quickly, she set the goblet down, knowing she had compromised herself quite enough for the moment.

"I beg your pardon," her companion said abruptly, his eyes turning apologetic. "Here I am, keeping you from your home and serving you wine, having failed insofar to ask your name!"

The wine made her feel warm inside and infinitely more comfortable in this gentleman's company, yet not so comfortable that she had stopped dreading this very question. Her finest clothes and the pains she took to hide her humble origins were useless now as an acute sense of loyalty to her little family overrode any shame she had previously felt. She straightened her back and her shoulders, forcing a proud smile to brighten her countenance.

"My mother's name is Diana, and my stepfather's is Antoninus. He is a craftsman and trades in the city. My name is Julia."

For a long, peculiar moment, Quintus was speechless. Heartened, she guessed that he must know Antoninus, and felt a surge of pride that such highborn people could be friends of her kin. Only when her companion's jaw fell with what appeared to be sheer horror did she realise that something was very wrong.

"Oh, dear Gods!" he cried, his face screwed up in disgust. "You can't be, the very same…it can't be the truth!"

She blanched as he stood suddenly, towering over her as she shrank from his unfathomable accusations.

"Sir, what have I said? What is wrong?" Tears spilled down her face as he raised his hand above her. For one petrifying second, she thought that he would strike her. A moan of fear escaped her lips.

He seemed a little calmer then, though he continued shaking with barely-contained rage. "You must leave now, child. Get out, now!"

_Get out, now! What had she done?_

Her sewing basket slipped out of her hand, though she barely noticed, her senses numbed thoroughly with shock and mortification. Only when it hit the ground with a thump, a multitude of scraps of fabric and needles spilling over the sandy ground, did she turn her eyes to where they lay. She had long since lost track of how much time had passed since Quintus had turned her, without so much as a goodbye, out of his home, for no reason she could possibly understand. 

Hardly caring that nightfall fast approached, bring with it a chilly breeze, she collected up her things with one hand, wiping away a steady stream of tears with the other. She resumed her dawdling walk with a painful weight building inside her chest. No one had ever treated her this way before. Moreover, Quintus had shown her such hospitality, even beyond normal Roman society protocol. 

Confusion and deep hurt drove her to cry harder, until great, agonising sobs pushed themselves up into her throat. Darkness descended so that soon, her eyes already blurred and hot with crying, she could barely see the road ahead of her – let alone which path she should take to return home.

Her heart began to race. She had strayed from her usual, failsafe route earlier in the day in order to reach the wealthier homes the city comprised. Now she was paying dearly for it. If she were to be seen, walking alone at night, the least disastrous fate that could befall her was the permanent loss of her reputation. Only bad women walked alone at night. All decent people, not only ladies, knew that.

Julia let out a great, aching sigh, straining her vision to locate the nearest place she could rest for a moment. She had no way of knowing the time. A dull, throbbing sensation began in her forehead, building to a sharper pain until the feeling consumed her. She felt hungry as well as exhausted. Antoninus would surely have come searching for her by now, undoubtedly involving all of their neighbours in seeking her out also.

This certainty made her situation doubly devastating, as it signalled that she must be a much greater distance from home than she had initially thought, seeing as she had not yet been discovered. No one could have imagined that she might drift this far. She winced at the feeling of cold stone against her tired, tender flesh as she slumped onto the ground, comfortably concealed by the shade of an olive tree.

Her next fit of sobs was interrupted, after what seemed like an eternity, by the sound of footsteps not far away. Julia was gripped with fear, for a long moment, that she had either been discovered by a passer-by, or that she was shortly to be abducted and murdered by some criminal vagrant. Her eyes remained wide and fixed on the ground as she pulled her knees up against her chest. She remained paralysed even as the footsteps – heavy, masculine and purposeful – drew closer. 

"Good evening, Madam. Madam?" 

Though the stranger's tone was surprisingly tentative, the sound was still abrupt enough to elicit a little cry from Julia's unbearably taut insides.

She lifted her gaze to meet his only briefly, barely registering what he looked like before pulling herself back onto her aching feet and taking flight, running with a strength she did not truly possess. The sense of etiquette she usually abided by without fail had entirely left her, so overwrought had she become. Several times she almost stumbled as she charged blindly through the darkness. 

Her only thoughts were of escape, and a miracle. The miracle being that she would suddenly find herself back inside her safe haven, the little villa, containing everything she could possibly require to live her narrow though contented life. For once, she forgot about all the things in the outside world she longed to see and experience, all those things she tasted nightly in her dreams though never seemed to be able to find once she woke.

Marius stood stock still throughout the whole spectacle. Once Diana's beautiful girl had completely disappeared, he began to laugh.

Julia soon found herself in dense copse of trees; once more, she was alone. 

At that moment, the most bewildering thing happened: amidst settling down upon the soft, springy, grass-covered earth, she realised that her terror of the darkness and solitude, and of being so far away from home and familiar things, had wholly disappeared. Her breathing became much less laboured as she calmed and warmed internally, and the pain all but left her head and her limbs. Running had been exhilarating. The feeling of resting amid nature was suddenly very pleasurable, and for a few mad moments, she thought she never wanted it to end.

A smile sprung to her weary features when the sound of horses reached her ears. She loved horses; everything about the creatures delighted her. They were possibly the only thing she did not resent about rural life. Far from the dreadful fear that had possessed her when the stranger had spoken to her, this sound heartened her beyond belief. She waited, anticipation filling her with unlikely optimism, as the sound drew nearer.

Wooden wheels screeched against more wood – someone was driving a cart. Julia, having travelled, knew the sound very well. For no reason she could comprehend at that bizarre moment, particularly given her hazy frame of mind, she knew without a shadow of a doubt that the driver of this vehicle would be no threat. 

The scent of woodland, fruit and moisture from the ground filled her nostrils, pervading her grateful spirits. She _knew this driver, though not in a worldly sense._

Peering in the direction of the noise, she saw the cart clearly, along with the outline of its controller. Her father, the soldier – a deep sense of satisfaction, and of immense happiness suffused her at catching sight of him finally, certainly, within the waking world. A little sigh escaped her lips, and she closed her eyes tightly, not daring to look into his face. The amount she had glimpsed of him was quite enough for now.

He did not drive towards her, as she had somehow expected he would not. The sound of his passage – strident, and unmistakeably real – began to dim as he passed by the copse, and onward, roughly along the path she had hastily taken in her recent 'escape'. A soldier, plainly. Still in armour and furs, straight-backed, and heroic. Shivering, as much with ecstatic reverence as with the chill in the air, she rose to her feet in order to follow the sound of the man's retreat.

She had never known a father's love, yet she knew enough about this elusive honour to know that this, what she now experienced, must be it. The cart seemed to pick up speed as she followed it, so she quickened her own pace to catch up. The image of it before her weary eyes became clouded, less tangible.

Of course, she told herself. All apparitions are transient. This may be the only chance I ever receive to know his love.

An astoundingly short space of time seemed to pass before the familiar buildings, trees and other landmarks of her home square showed themselves against the moonlit azure of the sky. By then, near-delirious with joy and fatigue, Julia walked by herself, her father having returned to whichever plane of existence he had ascended to upon his death. 

For all she had forgotten the disagreeable events and dreadful emotions of earlier in the evening, all of it may as well have come to pass a hundred years before. Even the sight of Antoninus, his white face almost fluorescent in the darkness and clenched fists trembling by his sides, was not enough to jolt her out of her dreamy reverie. She smiled brightly at him as she approached, as if to try and share some of her bliss with him through the gesture.

"Julia!" he snapped, raising one large hand and taking a long, tremulous stride forward. She took a stride backwards in response, suddenly stunned. Now that the pair stood closer together, she could see clearly even in this bad light that his eyes were swollen and red. Her dismay turned swiftly to horror. Even when her mother had almost died in their old apartment, thirteen years before, she could not recall ever having seen Antoninus cry.

"Julia, I have never been more terrified in all my life than I was today. I see now that I was an imbecile ever to have allowed you to leave this house unescorted. Even Annia and that horse boy were weeping with fear!" His voice rose to a crescendo of rage and reproach with those words, before he paused, closing his eyes and biting hard on his lower lip, reliving that whole afternoon. Julia swallowed, and would have protested, had her throat not grown so tight with guilt.

"Where did you go?" Her stepfather seemed about to collapse into tears right before her eyes. "And with whom? Oh, what a disgrace you are! Your mother was right. You should have wed the first good boy who offered for you! What am I to do with you now? Oh, dear Gods, what if you were seen? No one will ever want you. These are unstable times, child! If you do not have your home and your family, you have nothing! No security, nothing!"

Julia stayed silent, her only movement being to wipe a stray tear from one dust-coated cheek. How could she answer his lectures about family and security after the miracle she had witnessed today?

"Well? Have you nothing to say? Good." He turned his back on her, making no move to allow her to enter their home first, as would a gentleman in a firmer state of mind. "From now on you will never leave this house. Under no circumstances. Annia will see to your duties at market, and you will never again enter the home of a stranger, however well-to-do, to sell your sewing! I see now how perverse the idea was, and how dangerous. 

"You are a woman, Julia, and a very precious one. If I did not love you as I do, I would allow these appalling demonstrations to continue. But I do love you, may the Gods help me. You are too good for this world, but if it is the last thing I do, I will find a place for you within it. There _must be a place for you somewhere."_


	16. XV

Julia woke late the following day, her stomach roaring with hunger, and her mind thoroughly refreshed

Julia woke late the following day, her stomach roaring with hunger, and her mind thoroughly refreshed. She had dreamed vividly, of her soldier, though her memory was frustratingly fragmentary. Moreover, it was difficult to retain the recollections she had in the face of the attitudes of the rest of the little household.

Antoninus, despite the hideously early hour, had disappeared completely, leaving behind only a terse list of instructions passed on verbally by Annia, who could barely look her young mistress in the eye. The only way Julia knew how to respond to the situation was through obeying nonchalantly. She could not contemplate yet how utterly tedious the days to come, confined as she would be to the villa, were going to be. 

She began to miss her mother terribly. Growing their own food in the gardens, however much she tried to encourage the plants, was difficult and reminded her constantly of Diana's graceful domesticities. Julia tried to imagine what she would be doing at this moment or that, in between her daydreams. When she did not think of her mother, thoughts and memories of her anonymous, ghostly visitor filled her weary mind. She wondered if he truly were her father, or if not, who it was he could possibly be.

She and Antoninus spoke to each other little over the coming weeks, though he did not cease bringing her small gifts and oddities he collected around Rome after the long days he spent trading in the great city. Sometimes he would deliver them to her himself, silently and occasionally with a grudging smile, however mostly she would discover them lying atop her bed, if they were not passed to her via Annia.

Each time this happened, Julia fought inwardly not to let herself dwell for too long on how cold her normally warm guardian had become. He could hardly bear to look at her, she understood, because he had no way of knowing what had happened to her the day she had found herself in Quintus's home. The thought was galling to her in the extreme; for to her stepfather, she was no longer an innocent child. She was soiled property, as far as he was concerned.

One afternoon, after she had spent many dreary hours collecting fruit from the trees directly outside their home, she found a stack of parchments upon her bed. Turning to Annia who, on Antoninus's instructions, followed her mistress around as both carried out their duties, Julia gave the girl a quizzical look.

"Did my stepfather leave these here, Annia?"

"Yes, Miss."

"Do they not belong to him?"

"I think not, Miss, or else he would not have left them in your room, I'm sure." The servant, not waiting to be dismissed, turned and pretended to walk down the passageway, when she had every intention of remaining within earshot of the other woman's activities.

Julia touched the bundle of papers, bearing no sign that anyone had marked them yet. Then, a number of pieces of charcoal, wrapped in a small scrap of cloth and placed beside them, caught her eye. Had Antoninus given her this so that she could write? Of course not; he knew her to be illiterate, the same as most other Roman women bar the privileged few she envied so much.

He wanted her to draw, to ease the awful boredom his restrictions upon her had caused. So he was aware of her growing frustration and building anger, though he had so far not attempted to console her in person or reduce the harshness of her punishment.

Thinking of him with sudden gratitude, she unwrapped the charcoals and almost laughed out loud as the blackness smudged onto her fingertips. She would draw away her ennui, and she decided in that moment _what she would draw: the images, fascinating and bewildering, of her dreams. The faces of the nameless figures: the beautiful lady in all her finery, and the soldier whose presence had already spilled over into her waking life._

***

Quintus, since the day he had first laid eyes on Lucilla's exquisite progeny grown into a fine young woman, had been living in an abyss of shock and revulsion. From his first sight of the girl, all of the certainties and plans he had been accumulating for so long had been completely crushed. 

From that indescribably horrible second he had known exactly whose daughter Julia was. Not the General at all – everything about her screamed out to him that she had not a drop of Maximus's noble blood inside her. 

For every part of her that was not her great mother's was her true father's. Most of all her eyes, framed in inky black lashes; they were too large and bright, and showcased too volatile a soul to have originated anywhere else. Quintus had not wanted to look directly into them for more than an instant, and yet had not been able to tear his own horror-struck gaze away from them. They were every bit as mesmerising and dangerously seductive as they had been the last time he had seen such eyes all those years ago.

_Commodus. No one else. By no miracle could she have come from any other man._

_The most loyal of menservants, Didius had taken the revelation with a shudder of aversion, followed by a long silence. The room in which they sat had been hushed for what seemed an eternity, the atmosphere punctured only by the stomping of Quintus's feet as he paced back and forth across polished marble, his contained rage as palpable as if he were breathing fire._

"_Why would she carry her brother's child?" he barked suddenly, the tension in the air breaking suddenly like a taut rope. "She was dying, and she knew it. I am certain she did, oh, the sweet…" He paused abruptly, having no idea whether Didius knew exactly what his master's feelings for the lady had been, but having no wish to betray his long-held secret out loud._

Didius did not raise his eyes to meet the other man's, merely waiting for him to finish unloading his mental burden.

"Oh, the bastard, the bastard…" Quintus spat, thinking of the late Emperor with white-hot hatred. He had never forgotten what the villain had looked like, or the sound of his voice, or how he had terrorised the leader of his Praetorians and indeed everyone unfortunate enough to live under his rule. Now he knew how evil Commodus had truly been, and the depths to which he had sunk in his brutality. 

Raping and impregnating his own sister, surely the closest thing he had ever had to a friend and ally.

The idea that Lucilla could have been a consenting partner in the union was unconscionable, unthinkable. She had been violated. She had loved Maximus! Quintus had wished with all his heart that she could have loved him…

Hot tears welled in his eyes which he strove to hide. Didius, thankfully, seemed not to notice.

"It is an appalling truth, sir, but a truth nonetheless," the manservant corroborated what Quintus already knew, his voice soft.

The other man's heavy footsteps slowed to a halt. "It is. It is…" Shaking his head, and suppressing the urge to collapse into tears, he continued pacing the vast chamber. "But she had to nothing to gain by bearing the child…"

"And nothing to lose," Didius interrupted faintly.

Quintus considered his words with an open mind and a generous heart. Turning, he looked him squarely in the eye. "I agree, but _why? Why cast a child, not only a bastard but born of __incest, into this brutal world?"_

"I merely speculate sir, but to a fallen and broken woman, I imagine a child, any child, would be welcomed as a gift from the Gods. The girl was never to know her father anyway."

"A gift from the Gods," Quintus repeated, barely audibly. "She did not need to bear the infant. There are ways to…prevent the necessity for birth when an unwanted child is conceived. She must have had a reason…and I do not see why it should not have been that: the desire to for comfort, and a legacy untainted by the past."

Didius felt some small satisfaction at his constant ability to pacify his master with a few well-chosen words. His concealed his fears, however, of what he would do next, having finally found what he had given up searching for so many years ago.

Quintus's eyes widened slowly, as though he were visualising some fascinating object far into the distance.

"May I ask what you are thinking, sir?" Didius enquired, not really desiring to know.

His only reply was a broad smile. "I am thinking that there may yet be hope for this Empire, Didius. Not only for us. Not this time!"

***

The great stone construction, an arena of some sorts, terrified Julia to the core of her being. Just looking at it, even from her vantage point some distance away, was enough to make her heart race and her breathing turn ragged. It was enormous, magnificent, by far the largest building she had ever laid eyes on. She hadn't thought it possible for such things to exist, to be built by men's hands. She knew Rome to be full of such grandiose creations, but still, this particular edifice very literally took her breath away.

Before she even realised she was moving, she found herself within the sandy grounds of the construction itself, surrounded by an immense auditorium, bereft of any actual people. Julia's hand went to her throat and pressed against her flesh as sobs threatened to escape – she was petrified, though her fear was mixed with exhilaration. Harsh winds beat about her face, bringing flecks of sand against her face and into her eyes. Brushing them away, she noticed the rose petals, in their thousands, strewn all around the expanse of the ground.

Rose petals concealing huge pools of blood.

She stifled a cry of disgust and fear. This was a place of mass killing for the delights of an unscrupulous mob; the auditorium encircling the arena told her that. A place of entertainment by violence and death. 

Her own imagination was far too vivid. Grasping at once that this was yet another dream, she wondered with building trepidation whether it could be an insight into a time long past. Or whether, as she dreaded, it was possibly a message from another level of existence – even a warning. But a warning against what?

The memory of the blood-and-petal-scattered arena remained crystal clear and acutely terrifying in her mind. The moment Annia's hawk-like gaze was removed from her, Julia retired to her chamber and took out the papers and charcoals, vowing to rid her mind of the ghastly images by committing them to paper. 

Within minutes, the first sheet of plain white parchment, clearly expensive, was covered with heavy black smudges as Julia trained herself to compose the lines and shading exactly as she recalled them; every detail of the monstrous construction she could call to mind was included, until the entire picture lay before her eyes. She wiped moisture away from her eyes, feeling a small part of the void in her heart finally filled.

Still, one figure remained branded on her mind: the face of her nameless soldier and guardian. She spread out another sheet of parchment and readied a piece of charcoal, closing her eyes to picture him as clearly as she could.

Footsteps elsewhere in the villa called her back to hostile reality. Hastily, she pushed the first picture beneath her bed, holding it reverently as though it would be ruined with even the lightest touch to its blackened surface.

Seating herself demurely down on her bed, she steeled herself from a haughty reminder from Annia that she was needed to complete some or other tedious chore somewhere in the household. The girl's shrill tones, however, were nowhere to be heard.

Instead, the boy in charge of the horses and cart leaned tentatively through her doorway. His childish face, suntanned from spending most of his narrow life out of doors, wore a look of pure admiration welcomed by his young mistress.

"Miss? There is the servant of a gentleman here to see you. He would not tell me why; he insisted he must speak to you alone."

"Oh." Julia's heart rose to her throat and then sank back painfully. The only gentleman who both knew of her existence and employed a manservant was the very same who had turned her from his home that awful night; an experience that still cut her to the core whenever she chanced to remember it.

"What should I tell him, Miss?" 

She forced a smile to her numbed features. "You need say nothing. I will see him myself."

The boy's innocuous brown eyes widened, aware as he was of the rules, handed down by his master, regarding Miss Julia's need to be sequestered from the outside world and the influence of strangers. "Are you sure that is wise, Miss?"

Julia stood, tilted her head coquettishly and grinned. "Quite sure, my dear. Where is Annia, do you know?"

"She is at market – she left only a few moments ago, and will be gone most of the day. Are you in need of anything, Miss?"

"Oh, no thank you. I will be a few moments at the door."

The boy stood aside, smiling dreamily in her direction, as she passed. At the doorway, she faced Didius with an expression of forced, adverse civility.

"Good morning, Madam. My master sends his regards and sincerest apologies for the way he has treated you. I, too, must express my regrets."

Julia could not conceal her surprise. The downtrodden manservant had wasted no time in pinpointing the purpose of his visit even with the commonest courtesies, and now could barely look her in the eye. His face, already withered with years, was grey with fatigue and strain, and everything about his admission of guilt was unmistakeably truthful. The anger she had cultivated since their last fateful meeting all but evaporated. Now she hadn't a clue how to deal with the situation. 

In a desperate gesture of peace, Didius clumsily extended a hand to take one of her own. She obliged without hesitation, pursing her lips as he bowed earnestly over her fingers, afraid she would say something her nature would not otherwise have permitted.

"…Your apologies are accepted, Didius," she finally said, her voice shaky.

He raised his head, smiling his gratitude. "I thank you, Madam, from the bottom of my heart. Will you accept my master's apologies?"

She frowned, sighing deeply. "No. I don't think I can."

She should have been enraged, she knew, that his master had left her to fend for herself in the streets of Rome as night had fallen. To find her own way home in darkness – and to the dubious advances of strange men. She might have died out there...were it not for her soldier. All because of Quintus.

Didius's look of anguish deepened. He turned away slightly, obviously thinking, before taking a breath and facing Julia squarely once more.

"Will you do my master and myself the honour of returning to our house, so that he may ask for your forgiveness himself? Even if you will not grant it, Madam, we will be eternally grateful for your willingness to listen."

She instantly prepared her reply of 'No', though the word seemed to die in her throat. It was proving impossible to vent her underlying fury to this humble pawn of a wicked man – the real object of her hatred. How satisfying it would be to cut Quintus down to his face! Her smile, genuine and full of anticipation of this pleasure, rejuvenated itself upon her lips, used to grimacing in recent days.

Glancing over her shoulder, she sensed the emptiness of the villa, apart from the sounds emanating from the pantry of the stable boy pottering around and helping himself to food. The child would certainly be willing to distract Annia from noticing her mistress's absence, should the shrewish maid return early from her errands.

"I will be delighted to listen to your master apologise, Didius. If you will excuse for a moment first, I have some arrangements I must make first."


	17. XVI

Julia had so far failed to guess, Antoninus had gathered, that the gifts he often brought her were his way of apologising for 

Julia had so far failed to guess, Antoninus decided, that the gifts he often brought her were his way of apologising for the necessary severity of her punishment. Lately he had been wishing that he could have found some more lenient way of controlling her wilful behaviour, however after long hours spent in a dusty Roman market earning the money he required to keep her, his perpetual exhaustion of mind and body made dreaming up an alternative all but impossible.

This evening, making sure around the villa that the servants had done their duties as instructed, he felt unable to resist peering into his stepdaughter's chamber, if only merely to see if all was well. From outside the room, no sound could be heard. He wondered if she could possibly have retired early.

Quick, feminine footsteps caused him to glance over his shoulder before he knocked on Julia's door.

Annia smiled and bowed her head as Antoninus stared at her quizzically. 

"Has Miss Julia retired so early, Annia?"

"No, sir. She was here when I returned from the city, looking very pleased with herself, if I may say. I believe she is in the kitchen."

Striding swiftly towards the other end of the villa, apprehension heavy on his heart, Antoninus half expected to find that room empty also. He sighed audibly with relief at the sight of her slender figure, golden blonde waves spilling over her shoulders as she bent over a mass of bread dough, kneading it with some wooden implement he could not name.

"You may leave that to Annia, my dear, if you wish."

She shot him a look of undisguised contempt, flecks of green glittering menacingly in her eyes. "And leave me with no distractions from the tiresomeness of this place? I shall go mad if I cannot do _something_."

He closed his eyes, exasperated, toying seriously with the idea of taking her straight back home to the countryside and her mother. 

As if she sensed his desperation, her swift little hands stopped what they were doing, and her shoulders slumped. "I am sorry, truly I am. I get so frustrated living under Annia's tyranny and with that stable boy fawning over me."

Antoninus started to smile, though the expression fell immediately as his eyes came to rest on Julia's wrist. He almost gasped out loud.

Upon it was a heavy bracelet of bright, polished gold, glittering vulgarly with a number of fat, bright gems. He had never before seen it, either worn by her or in the jewellery box gifted to her by that highborn cousin – of that, he was absolutely certain. His heart began to thud as innumerable bewildering possibilities invaded his brain as to how she could have obtained it.

He had not given it to her; even as he frequently wished he could lavish such treasures upon her, he would surely never be able to. Jewels resembling this one could seldom be bought; only inherited. Some stranger, therefore, and certainly one of the patrician class, was responsible.

Moreover, this present had been made within his home, for Julia could not have gotten out, not under the noses of the servants he had expressly ordered to keep her within the villa's walls.

"Is something wrong, sir?" she questioned him, slapping her palms down with irritation upon the worktop.

"No…no, my dear. I will see you later."

A baffling sense of impotence forced him to hold his tongue. As he strode towards his own chambers, his brain threw up several excuses for his foolish silence. _She is not hurt, and her character remains the same. She can have done no terrible thing. Of course she has friends. How could anyone fail to be fond of her?_

Late that night, as was the case every night, he thought of Diana. It had been several months since their last meeting. He found himself praying fervently then, as he had not done since his childhood. Praying that soon he would see his wife again, and see Julia off with a suitable husband. 

He loved the girl to death, it was true, yet she was equally capable of inspiring in him deep resentment as passionate adoration. Absently, he wondered whether she had yet discovered the extent of her powers of manipulation.

***

It was the same each and every night. The heat of the day cooled as the sky turned purple, followed by rich, opaque blue; only then could Julia be absolutely certain that every living creature in and around the villa, bar herself, was sound asleep. 

Antoninus retired early without fail, as much to avoid having to speak to his stepdaughter as from tiredness. The servants ignored her out of duty. Leaving the house in secret was possible at certain times during the daylight hours, however the risk was obviously much smaller under cover of darkness. That was what she had told Quintus, countless times, since their acquaintance had begun.

Leaning out of her chamber window, she smiled at the earthy and sweet aromas rising from the vegetation lining the ground below. Peering out with pleasure across the land she loved and despised in equal amounts, she silently prayed for Didius's arrival. His company was no so tedious as she had once believed it to be; he always had many interesting tales to tell of life as manservant to the wealthy, and of inhabiting such a fine residence. 

Those were the topics of discussion she liked best, and indeed, the only ones she cared to tolerate, so exhausted and tetchy had she become, taking these nightly jaunts.

At long last, the far-off figure of the gentleman she had been waiting for materialised, stepping out from a thicket of trees. The sky glimmered with orange streaks as the sun disappeared completely below the horizon, the brightness hurting her eyes. She barely felt the pain, so intoxicated with expectant adrenaline had she become.

***

Quintus, once he had set his sights upon a goal, had never been known to give up his pursuit easily. The promises he made to himself, at least, he never could bring himself to break. Emotion very seldom figured in the decisions he made, however much he admired or became involved with the people with whom he dealt in his intrigues and ruses. He had never been in doubt of any of these things – which made the progress of his friendship with Julia all the more absurdly confusing.

He knew without a shadow of a doubt that there was no possibility of Maximus having sired her, and yet this evening, as he conversed with the girl, he found himself thinking of the battle in Germania decades before.

The memories – all of them glorious, exhilarating, horrifying and impossible to forget – were as lucid as they had been seconds after the event. Quintus smelled the blood, felt the freezing air, heard the screams and, best of all, saw his master, as sharply as he had at the time. 

_"People should know when they're conquered."_

The General's eyes, full of compassion and intelligence (two qualities Quintus dearly wished to possess in greater quantities) alongside pride and strength, staring into his own. Oddly soft and benign, though immovably full of resolve and honour. Of course the Lady Lucilla had been devoted to him. There mustn't have been a part of him she did not love.

_"Would you, Quintus? Would any of us?"_

Sense. Quintus's father had never ceased reminding him that, unlike his brother Marcellus or even most of his sisters, he had not a jot of common sense. These judgements, however, far from belittling him, had made him ever more determined to prove all of his critics wrong. As Maximus's second, he had completely believed that his ambitions were fulfilled. With the General dead and gone, an awful void and developed, and remained gaping and agonising until this very day.

Julia coughed, having taken a too-large mouthful of strong wine, and jolted her host out of his reflections. He blinked in her direction, raising his eyebrows.

She promptly flushed a dark crimson, hastily wiping the spilled beverage from her chin with a tiny wrist. "Oh, the Gods, I am hopeless!"

"Don't be silly, my dear. You would be worshipped in society, were it only feasible for you to mingle with those of our class."

She frowned, the look of hurt overshadowing her beauty, and Quintus instantly wished his words unsaid. Not only were they lofty and imprudent, they were untrue; the girl was of the very highest class, much higher than his own. He moved quickly to take a seat opposite hers. They were alone, sequestered beyond the reach of the endlessly prying servants, and even Cassia, given plenty to occupy her time.

The elegant parlour was candlelit, a more romantic atmosphere than Quintus had intended. Julia shuffled uncomfortably, her wine discarded, obviously fighting the urge to yawn and betray her distractedness.

"Sir, am I not mingling with one of your class at this moment?"

"Indeed, you are. What we must do is find a way to raise you to your proper stations." At that moment, he could muster no possible plan, so quickly shifted the subject to safer ground: "Do you like your bracelet? Did your stepfather question where you obtained it at all?"

Her eyes lit up and she extended her arm to admire it in the golden light, patently liking it very well. "It is heavenly! I have never expected to own anything quite as lovely. My stepfather, whatever he thought, did not question me. I think he knows better now than to doubt my honour." Her eyes flashed with derision.

Quintus noted the straightness of her back and confident tilt of her head. Anyone who had never seen her before would believe her raised as a princess, despite her shabby clothes. No doubt, strangers wondered at her origins. Her sharpness of tongue was her mother's, and Julia would know, as Lucilla had, when to keep her comments to herself. The shrewd, ruthless manner lived on in the girl. 

For him, it was an indescribable thing to behold. If only he had never learned the truth of her paternity, the picture may have been perfect. She seemed to embody the grace and intelligence of the ruling class of the Empire – albeit unadulterated by the corruption and intrigues bred within the Imperial Palace.

Her accepting all of his apologies, though not without a fair measure of coaxing, was one of his proudest achievements to date. Now he never wished for her to leave his company.

Taking a long draught of wine, it occurred to him that he had neglected to answer one of her questions. "You asked me for a favour a few nights ago, didn't you?"

"Yes. What do you think?" Her gaze turned hopeful.

"In truth, I have never known an educated woman. But I believe that certain aspects of education are essential to everyone. I would be delighted to educate you, on the condition that you will agree to take frequent lessons."

Her smile was breathtaking; bright and sincere, with a lady's restraint of her emotions. This was Julia's moment of triumph – the opportunity she had been awaiting all of her young life.

"Tell me about the Empire," she said softly, not raising her eyes from the scroll laid out in front of her. She had not taken a sip of the small goblet of wine he had allowed her, though her tone professed drunkenness of a kind. Her exhilaration at finally being able to read, if only a number of small, uncomplicated words and phrases, had gone straight to her head.

Quintus smiled, proud and enchanted by her intelligence and innocence. "That is a very broad subject to be explained all in once evening, my dear!"

"Oh, I want only to know about how it was before…things changed. My stepfather sometimes speaks of the Empire being in the hands of a lot of…oh dear, but he calls our leaders imbeciles!"

"That is the truth of it," Quintus said matter-of-factly. "Your stepfather is a very wise man."

"I would not know. I have lived all my life in the countryside, except for very brief visits into the city, like the ones I pay to you." Picking up a quill pen, she dipped it into a nearby inkpot, as she had seen Antoninus do a thousand times, and started to scratch upon a fresh piece of parchment. "Tell me about the times before these imbeciles. Tell me about the days of Marcus Aurelius's rule. Please."

Her host watched her eyes covertly as she cast them this way and that, looking intently at the marble statues of his ancestors. Her irises, like pots of molten gold full of floating emeralds, swam with dreamy fantasies of an opulent, long-passed era. The days of her own family's greatness, he acknowledged with a fresh pang of wonder and dull sadness.

"Well, that is a time I do know something about. I was a green recruit to the emperor's legions. It was the best time of my life, Julia. I enlisted only because my father insisted, but I never looked back. They were great times for all of us."

Julia's smile remained. Absently, she had begun making small sketches upon the parchment alongside her infantile attempts at writing. "Did you meet the emperor? Was he a good man?"

"'The philosopher'…I met him only one or two times, though I do not think he acknowledged me. Ruling the Empire was a duty from which a god might shrink, and anyway…he saved his true favour for better men than I. As so many others did."

She glanced upwards briefly, frowning slightly as she noticed the gentleman's bitterness. For the moment, however, she ignored this, lifting her chin as a signal for him to continue.

"The emperor had two children, a daughter and a son, his only heir. They were beside him almost constantly, at every state occasion, every warlike campaign, being reared and prepared for their duties. I believe that this was the start of both of their problems. The Prince, you see…"

"Commodus!" she interrupted, unable to keep her knowledge of the name a secret, so proud was she of possessing it.

Quintus smiled, a little irritated at her impertinence, though willing to let the slip-up pass.

"Commodus succumbed early in his youth to the influences of vice and corruption within his father's court which, owing to the emperor's unfailingly moralistic rule, had not yet risen to prominence. Yet the young man found it of his own volition, or should I say, it found him."

Julia feigned a revulsion to this information she did not honestly feel. Her host could read buried fascination in her reactions. Curiosity, he suspected, which was to be expected of a sheltered country girl never before exposed to scandalous behaviour of any kind.

"What of the Princess?" the girl enquired, self-consciously lowering her narrowed gaze back to the papers on the carved marble desk before her.

Quintus needed to swallow, a crystal-clear image of the splendid woman pervading his mind's eye, before he could reply. "She was a marvel. Spirited and good, the most upright and honourable lady I ever had the privilege of serving. Her father worshipped her, and could never deny her anything. He married her to one of his favourites upon her coming of age, a gentleman she was very fond of. The Lady Lucilla was everything her brother had failed to be, and continued to be until her death, I am certain.

"Marcus Aurelius died of natural causes during a military campaign; the very one I told you of, wherein I was Second to our General. Prince Commodus was not yet twenty years old, and now our ruler. He was entirely unready, and inept in the extreme when it came to matters of State importance."

"I am almost twenty," Julia cut in, her voice quietened with surprise. Quintus avoided looking at her, feeling unable to do so as he recounted the story of her parents, calling to the fore many of the memories he had resolved to bury forever that black day when the General and the hated sovereign had fallen.

"The new emperor was barely sensible in his decisions. He horrified the senators and his advisors with his schemes and proposals. One of those proposals was for one-hundred-and-fifty days of games, beginning at his arrival in Rome. There was barely state finance enough to cover this, disregarding the entire city's other expenses. It was disastrous. Yet the people devoured it."

He glanced briefly in Julia's direction, seeking to gauge the intensity of her concentration. She was proving a model pupil – waiting with wide eyes upon his every word. He resisted a jubilant smile.

"Are you familiar with the concept of gladiatorial games, my dear?"

"Somewhat, from what I have been told. No one would go into much detail, for fear of offending the ears of a lady." Sarcasm rang clear in her tone.

That sufficed as a request for further information. Quintus's own remembrances of the games were catastrophic enough to sour him against speaking of them for the remainder of his life. He was willing to do anything, however, for Lucilla's child. 

"There is a structure, within the heart of Rome, built specifically to accommodate these spectacles. It is among the grandest constructions ever created by men, Julia, I am certain. Circular, with a ground of sand in the centre to soak up the blood of the slaves who would fight to the death within its walls." He paused, peering down at her again, and was startled to see that her face had turned deathly pale, her lips parted slightly as she visualised the thing he described.

"Have you ever seen anything like that, child?"

She was unable to reply for a long time.


	18. XVII

The dream of Lucilla returned to Quintus in all its ghastly glory

The dream of Lucilla returned to Quintus in all its grisly glory. 

The lady's body, once strong and fine, seemingly protected from harm by her sheer physical presence and vitality, fell to the frozen ground before him. Her white skin a map of injuries and violations – only this time, he was aware of where the greatest brutality had been dealt to her. He almost fancied, with a morbid, perverse fascination, that he could see through the bruised skin of her stomach to the cavity wherein Julia nestled, a barely-formed little life in her own right.

Lucilla lay in the dirt, before her lover, the General, and his horror-struck Second, powerless as they somehow were to assist her. Quintus tried to breathe, though his innards were stiffened with shock. _She is not real…the General is not real. They are dead; their pain is long over. _

He glanced desperately in Maximus's direction, only to see that the Spaniard was no longer there. Quintus was alone, in a strange, alien country, watching a raped and broken woman suffer inhumanly as she died a slow, lingering death. 

Lucilla screamed, clutching her belly, as large splashes of blood began to cover her gown, which had been torn to shreds. Torn by her brother so that he could take his evil pleasure ever more quickly. _"Commodus!" she shrieked. __"Commodus, Commodus!"_

"My lady!" Quintus called out to her. "My love!"

In that instant, the screaming dissolved into silence. Her long legs, no longer exposed or dripping with the blood of a savage attack and an unwanted, unnatural birth combined, lay relaxed and covered with clean linen.

She sighed contentedly, sitting up and blinking her eyes at him. Different eyes, and a different voice. Her body had changed; she was well-fed and healthy, her stomach and small breasts rising and falling naturally, calmly.

"My lady?" he repeated, his voice no more than a rasp of disbelief as he took in the golden blondeness of her hair and the boisterous glint in her large, almost supernaturally bright eyes.

Julia drew her knees up to her chest, holding his gaze with an immovable poise, as if she expected him to say something, or do something, though he knew not what.

Didius, in recent days, had behaved as if he had suddenly acquired a great deal of self-confidence. He spoke up to his master so often, and with such great insolence as far as Quintus was concerned, that both could barely inhabit the same room without angry, unsaid words simmering in the silence between them. Neither was fond of arguments, and as a result the volatile silence only increased as several long days passed uneventfully.

"Sir, Mistress Cassia would like to know where her jewels keep disappearing to. She would like to wear them to the wedding of her youngest sister."

"I…do not think a matter such as that concerns me. If Mistress Cassia has taken to misplacing her possessions, is it suddenly my place to reimburse her?" Quintus returned his attention to the parchments in his hands, covered with Julia's deft first attempts at handwriting. He smiled broadly, causing his manservant to groan loudly, no longer willing to try and conceal his emotions and grievances even before his employer and superior.

"You will not spare a single thought for the lady who has been more dutiful to you than any legal wife could ever be? Who has never said a word against yourself or spoken out of turn at all, even as you treat her more shabbily than a slave! Did you know that she curses the day she trusted you with her mother's jewels, nay with her own person? She believes you have given her treasures to your new minx."

Quintus swung on the other man then, recognising the slur on Julia's honour even after ignoring almost every other word in Didius's spiel. "Mistress Cassia will close her eyes and shut her damned mouth, unless she wishes to be cast back into the cesspit where I found her. You may tell her that, seeing as the two of you are now so close. You may also tell her that in the evenings she may not wish to leave her chambers from now on, seeing as she finds my choice of guest so disagreeable."

He had nursed a hope, albeit a pathetic, cowardly one, that Cassia would leave of her own volition, thereby releasing him from these vague yet distressing feelings of guilt. Yet she had been a fixture in his life, not merely his bed, for so many years that there was not a chance she would ever choose to do that. His only hope was to cast her out of his house by force.

"I know nothing of the whereabouts of her jewels, Didius," he lied, his mind conjuring various pictures of the said treasures by now adorning Julia's perfect, unlined skin. Gifts, keeping her happy and buying her silence at the same time. Some of them Cassia's – there, the blame was his. The rest of them – rings, hair ornaments and necklaces – had been Maria's. The only joys she had known during her short, isolated life, and too painful in any case to remain in her brother's possession.

"I think you do know something, sir, and I will find out what that is. Good night to you." Didius began a haughty retreat, pausing at the alcove leading out of Quintus's study. "But first…" 

"_What?" _

"You should be told that your pursuit of that girl is entirely improper." The manservant's voice and body shook with equal parts rage and humiliation. 'Improper' was a dreadful understatement. He would have liked to call it an abomination.

The other man laughed out loud, the first real amusement he had enjoyed in a very long time. "My _pursuit, you call it? Do you think me so irresponsible as to take for my lover a child I treat as if she were my own? And who, if I need remind you, will be of immeasurable value when the time comes to raise her to her proper place?" _

"Her proper place! You know _nothing of her, aside from that she is beautiful and prodigious and furtive. In due time you will tire of these plots and schemes, sir, and realise the true reason for your keeping her in this place night after night as though she were a strumpet! Her stepfather will learn of this."_

This caused the first twinge of alarm his servant's words had ever been known to cause in Quintus. His back straightened. "And will _you be the one to inform him?" _

With that, he stood and approached Didius swiftly, his footsteps echoing loudly. His voice shook with tremulous control. "Do as you will, Didius, if your wish is to see Mistress Julia injured so, and by your own hand. You cannot deny that you care for her, now, can you? So the choice will be yours. Protect her, or see her ruined, and leave this house yourself."

Didius closed his eyes and stood stock-still. "Very well. But know that as I protect the lady now from the harm you may do her within these walls, I have every intention of continuing to protect her in the future, even should you try to put her in her 'proper place'. While I remain in your service, she will remain safe from that."

Very aware of the fact that he could not simply turn Didius out of his home, however much he now wished to, Quintus retired to his chambers with a great weight upon his heart. Cassia's slow, regular breaths, stillness and silence as she lay across from him in the huge bed indicated that she had long fallen asleep, no longer bothering to wait for him to join her as she once had.

He leaned over, touching the platinum-blonde curls gathered at the nape of her neck, and wondered wearily why he felt so confused. The situation with Didius was barely even a problem; while Julia continued to frequent the villa, he would never willingly leave his post. In any case, Quintus could not do without his manservant's assistance in escorting the girl. He could never do it himself – no prominent, wealthy citizen could afford to associate with a girl born to poverty, no matter what the truth about her was.

Julia, Julia. The arrangement was absurd, he knew – an old man and a young woman of nineteen, being one another's only true friend. Yet her company was far too intriguing for him to simply give it up. Her reactions to the stories he told her, mere episodes from his own life, were as astonishing as her beauty; each time he spoke of them, she listening raptly and with captivating gratitude. Almost as if she had seen for herself the people and places of which he spoke.

He had given her everything she could possibly want: jewellery and fine linens, exquisite meals served in the villa's dining hall, and most importantly of all to the girl, the beginnings of an education few women could hope to receive. She could now read and write excellently, as she had always wished to do. 

And even after receiving all of this, when he could give her nothing new materially, she returned to him time and again, always eager to hear of those experiences Quintus would rather have forgotten forever.

There seemed to be no reason for her to risk social disgrace by visiting him any longer. They were on good terms, and he knew where she resided, so when the time came to present her for what she was, the granddaughter of Marcus Aurelius and last known product of the Antonine dynasty, it could not be any easier to do so.

The perfect solution finally occurred to him as though a lightening bolt had struck within the darkness of his chamber, lighting up his murky thoughts and clarifying the answer perfectly. He pressed a hand to his chest, trying to still the pounding of his heart, as the notion fleshed out within his mind. There was a way that would all at once secure Julia's place in society, her place in his life, and both of their futures in precisely the place where, more than anything, he longed for them to take place. 

It made absolute sense. He smiled to himself in the cold blackness enveloping him, all of his previous melancholy dissolving as the realisation of his true feelings dawned. Lucilla's child had been placed on this earth to belong to him, and him alone, so that they might rule the Empire together.

***

Julia tried to contain her mirth, and preserve her modesty, as she mounted the pony Didius had brought for her. All morning, she had been overcome with nerves, waiting for Quintus's manservant to collect her. Day, she was certain, would be an even more dangerous time than the night to be seen out of doors with a man. When he had promptly arrived, on horseback and leading a smaller steed beside him, she had almost laughed out loud with surprise and joy.

He smiled bemusedly as she pulled herself atop the placid grey, settling herself gracefully into the saddle and looking expectantly at him as a signal to lead the way. She made small talk cheerfully, more talkative than she had ever been in the company of her introverted companion. He answered her only briefly, tersely, letting her know that today there was a reason for his aloofness.

"Do the servants know that you are leaving them in charge, Mistress?" He almost spat the word 'mistress', though Julia was far too preoccupied to detect it.

"Oh, they no longer care whether I am there or not. My stepfather forbade them to let me leave their sight, although it is _I who should rightfully be supervising __them, is it not? They do as I tell them, even the maid, who hates me so."_

A short silence followed, during which Julia coloured, realising that he had not taken a word she had said seriously. She shuffled in the saddle, a feeling of discomfort and apprehension blighting her good mood.

"My visit with you is to be a short one," she confessed quietly. "I am to return home before the servants will note my absence."

Didius turned to face her suddenly then, making her cower slightly with surprise. He swallowed several times, his eyes wide and unblinking, as if wanting desperately to tell her something.

Men had looked at her that way before. The stable boy, no doubt picturing his young mistress on his arm, as his wife. She had caught Quintus peering at her in this fashion many times, thinking her innocently incapable of fathoming his adoration. Thankfully, however, Quintus only wished for her friendship, which she gladly gave in return for the irreplaceable gifts only he had the means to bestow: rich trinkets, and education.

Moreover, however, Antoninus often stared at her as though in pain, which disturbed her. Almost as if he expected her to take flight one day and leave him, and he completely unable to do anything to stop her. She tried to forget all of these things for the moment, preferring to relish this rare pleasure of travelling in the daylight hours, the prospect of a few stolen hours in Quintus's opulent abode ahead of her.

"Sir?" she enquired worriedly of Didius. "Is everything all right?"

His gaze snapped back to the road ahead of him, his brows knitted together with either anger or deep thought, or both. "Of course, Mistress."

She ate greedily of the sweetmeats Quintus had his servants place before her, abandoning some of her manners for probably the first time in all of her nineteen years. The spiced wine, she found, was far too strong and potent for her taste, causing her to regrettably leave the silver goblet untouched. Her host, having not removed his eyes from her for a second, signalled promptly to a young serving maid to bring her something more suited to the palate of a lady.

So far, she had not asked him why they were spending her visit outside his home, within a small, exquisite replica of a temple built to host such outdoor gatherings. The question, she decided, could not be ignored any longer.

"May I ask, sir, why we are dining here today? I have no objection, you see, but I would like to know the reason."

He laughed a little at this, though continued to look lovingly in her direction. She smiled back, enjoying afresh the now familiar feeling of commanding his constant attention and protection from those things that discomfited her. Such as her stepfather's neglect, and Didius's strange actions.

"I merely thought you might appreciate this setting, seeing as it is the daytime, and that after this day we may be back to meeting in the evenings." His jovial expression fell a little. "You are quite sure, now, that your stepfather will have no knowledge of this? I would never wish for your reputation to be spoiled, not ever." 

Julia eyed him with curiosity, realising that she need not have answered, for somehow he appeared entirely confident that her reputation would _never be spoiled. She looked to Didius as she accepted a goblet of some mystery beverage proffered by the maidservant, holding his expression of pure, terrifying anguish at the same time as raising the cup to her lips. _

"That is better?" Quintus asked brightly as she sipped almost robotically. She nodded, forcing a smile, wondering why a sensation of nausea had begun to rise within her. Groggily, she began to get up from where she sat.

"I must…I must walk a little, get some air into my lungs. Would you escort me, please, sir?"

Instantly he was by her side, holding her arm as gently as though it were made of clay. Absently, as they walked a small distance into the land surrounding the estate, she turned to see if Didius or the maidservant were following. Neither was anywhere to be seen.

She exhaled loudly, the sickness subsiding, as they reached a low wooden fence sectioning off Quintus's land from his next neighbour's. Leaning on the structure, she smiled gratefully at her friend, inwardly berating herself for taking such an odd turn. She had no reason to. No reason she could identify, at least.

"Oh, I love this land, and this city, Quintus!" The words seemed to rush out of her mouth before she could suppress the urge to speak. It did not occur to her at all that she had addressed him, for the first time, by his name.

"I used to despise the country, and everything within it. I hated my family for bringing me there to grow up. You see, even when I was a child, I knew that Rome was to be my home. But when I returned, I longed for the country again. I got so confused, being homesick no matter where I lived. I love both this land, and also the great buildings, life and movement of Rome, so much. I adore it all."

"Do you, my dear?" He stepped closer to her, his strides long and urgent. "Well, you are born to Rome, of course. It is your spiritual home. Your ancestors were born here to be rulers, and if Providence continues to work her magic, you will rule also, and so will your children…"

These words left her dumbstruck, so that as he fiercely took hold of her hand, bringing it to his lips, all she could do was gasp.

"Leave if you wish too, my precious Julia, but you will always be drawn back. You belong to Rome. Rome belongs to you!" With his fingers, he separated hers so that each lay flat upon his palm. Then he bent to kiss them, though not passionately, as she had expected, though with a measure of reverence and forbearance due to a queen, not the daughter of a pottery seller.

"Oh, no," she began to sob as he fell on one knee, her hand still resting atop his, limp and still. He had kissed her so tenderly, that the very last thing she had felt was offence! A wave of misery overcame her as she recognised why she had not yet responded properly to him. 

She wanted him to kiss her again like that, or even open his arms and embrace her with that pure love she knew he felt for her, had known since the first day they had met. Antoninus had never embraced her or kissed her hand; neither had her mother, that is, once Julia had changed from a child to a woman. No one gave her the kind of love she craved so terribly – warm, respectful, unashamedly affectionate – but Quintus. 

"It will belong to _us one day, my darling, if you will only have me. I love you. I was placed here by the Gods to love you, I swear I was! I have done no worthy thing with my life until now because I was meant to do such beside you. So be my bride, my lady. Give your consent, and we may marry this day if you wish!"_

She let out a loud, frenzied wail. It was not, after all, _that kind of love. Never could she be his wife, never anyone's wife, until someone had loved her entirely without carnality, self-interest, or suspicion. The way she was certain her father, her soldier, would love her, if only he walked upon this earth and not only inside her dreams._

When she ran, Quintus did not chase her. He only screamed her name, over and over, like a madman, his voice piercing her own sanity until she had come far enough for it to fade into the distance, into blessed silence. 


	19. XVIII

Chapter 19

Late into the night, when Julia stole outside to the stables to fetch her pony, Antoninus stood waiting, a look of pure grotesque wonderment frozen on his face. Before the situation could even register properly in her mind, she shuddered, for after this day's events she never wished to be stared at again by any man, for as long as she lived.

Her stepfather, thankfully, looked at her for only the briefest of moments before he turned to gaze out at the fields, frowning.

"It strikes me as very odd that you should wish to go somewhere at this hour, Julia. Or at any hour, considering what we have agreed."

She sighed, her chest aching with the tears she had not yet shed. "I want only to ride out into the fields. You never forbade that."

"Really? Lately, you don't seem to do that much anymore."

"I have been distracted."

He sniffed. "Of course you have."

Avoiding his piercing glare, she looked into her pony's stall, reaching in to stroke the mare's neck. Antoninus, however, would not be put off whatever mission he had sought her out to complete.

"May I go?" she said irritably, unable to force nonchalance into her voice.

"No. Not tonight. I must discuss something with you."

He lifted his right hand, in which was a sealed letter. Whether he had just written or received it, she could not tell. Either possibility worried her. Straightening her shoulders, she swallowed twice, trying to still her fluttering stomach. 

"I will speak with you, then."

"All right, although I was not asking for your permission. I am writing to your mother, you see, to tell her that we will shortly be returning home to her."

Before Julia could prevent it, a moan of surprise and confusion escaped her. Staring into her stepfather's face with the bewilderment of a child suddenly denied its favourite toy, she tried her hardest to speak, but her throat had constricted too much to expel all the questions she needed to ask. 

He seemed equally surprised by her reaction as she had been by his announcement. Taking a few tenuous steps towards her, he held out both arms in a bungling, miscalculated gesture of apology. Julia's only response was a devastated shriek, followed by the second torrent of tears she had wept that day.

"My darling…oh, dearest, I did not mean to upset you so!"

She covered her face, as much out of shame that he had seen her break down as from the heartbreak overcoming her. Many a time, in recent days, she had decided that she despised Antoninus. Years ago they had been perfectly suited to live together; he had known instinctively when to give her the free rein she desired, and she had understood when to submit daughterly obedience in return. When had he made up his mind to be as other men, those men who treated their children like pets and assets?

She, Julia, was her person in her own right, was she not? If he didn't recognise that, then certainly no man ever would. She could not love any man who would not allow her freedom in life and in spirit.

All might have been well with Quintus, if only he had not deigned to make a prisoner, an ordinary wife, of her. The thought was disgusting to her, though she did not even know why.

"You did not upset me," she murmured at length, facing to stone wall of the stable and frantically rubbing her wet, swollen cheeks. "I am feeling unwell today…that is all."

Antoninus was by now only inches away from her, and longed to reach out and make some tentative contact with her, both to express the long-standing feelings of guilt plaguing him and to try to win back her trust. Her hair hung to below her waist; shining, perfect honey-coloured curls tied loosely with narrow ribbons. 

Absently, irrationally, he compared her resplendent, almost otherworldly beauty with Diana's richer, more restrained charm, and found himself wondering how his staid, fragile little wife could possibly have produced the infuriatingly splendid creature before him. 

"You must come inside so we may discuss what is to be done, child!"

"I am not a child."

His hands trembled, hovering above her narrow shoulder. She shivered visibly, sensing his intentions as she unfailingly would each time he tried something similar, and failed.

"You will do as I say, in any case. This will wait no longer. Gods, my dear, the servants do not cease talking about you even though they allow you to get away with murder! It _is murder! You are destroying yourself as well as me. It would be the end of my poor wife if she knew all that you have been doing. Julia? __Julia?"_

"There is no need to discuss anything, or tell Mama. I am happy to go home."

A lie – everything she said to him of late was a lie. Her eyes closed tightly, she tried her hardest to think of anything except her last memory of Quintus's face. The last time she had seen her only friend.

Antoninus did not argue with this. The greyness of his skin and resigned slump of his shoulders informed her that he had simply run out of energy with which to do so. Lifting a weary arm, he shook the letter at her, as if to threaten her with its existence.

"If you are quite sure, then all is prepared. But first," he began darkly, "I must tend to some business."

***

The wine Quintus saved for dark moments such as these was truly lethal in large quantities; however, lethal, he fancied, might be just the effect he was looking for tonight. Julia was lost to him – there was no doubt about that. Every last inch of her sweet flesh, the miraculously perfect result of an inhuman attack, was as good as perished as far as he was concerned. 

His fantasies of her becoming his bride, pledging her eternal love to him before the Gods, and then for the rest of their life together caring for him by day and sharing his bed by night, finally seemed as nothing except perverted whimsies. She remained a confused, unworldly little girl, whatever her age, and fit to be no man's mate until she had resolved her inner turmoil. Perhaps he might have resolved them for her, had he only realised all of these things before his disastrous conduct that day.

Taking mouthful after mouthful of poisonous brew, and slipping gradually into blessed oblivion, he steeled himself to spend the rest of his miserable existence knowing that he had been responsible for making the lives of all of his most precious connections unendurable, in one way or another – Maria, the General, Lucilla, and now Lucilla's youngest child and final gift to the world.

He took several long, deep breaths as the wine reached his head and numbed his mind of painful thoughts, hardly noticing as the door to his sitting room creaked open. Looking towards the blurred figure of a beautiful, shapely woman as she trod towards him, he blinked several times, hardly believing his luck.

"Oh, may the Gods bless you! You have returned."

"I never left this place, sir, as you well know." 

Quintus shrank back where he sat, squinting as the lady, fair hair spilling around elegant white shoulders, bent to hurriedly take up the wine bottle and goblet where he had placed it within easy reach. 

"What are you doing, darling?"

"Saving your life, although I hardly see why I should trouble myself. Will you come to bed tonight?"

His heart sank, and he lurched forward to take hold of her upper arm, making her jump. "Cassia, love, we will never be parted again if that is what you wish. I will lie with you tonight and every night."

She jerked out of his grip, scowling at him and hurrying across to room to where he could not touch her, her mouth set in a hard, enraged line.

"Is this how you intend to treat me forever? I sacrificed everything to live here as your whore, because I loved you! In all honestly, I did. My family needed your influence at court, yes, but I did not care a fig for their desires! I gave up my virtue even after you lost that, your one success in life, though I was happy to." 

She strode up to the enormous fireplace, pouring what was left of the wine over the flames, making them leap and spark ferociously. "And you repay me by giving my mother's jewels to a woman so green and skittish that she belongs back in the cradle – not in your arms. It is perverted!"

He had begun to feel nauseous. With pleasure would he vomit onto the marble floors of his ancestors' home, though not in front of this woman. There had to be some measure of dignity still there for him to reclaim.

"I must…retire now, my dear. Could you please fetch Didius? There are things to be done which only he may assist me with. Cassia…?"

"No. Didius is occupied at this moment, with a visitor. A gentleman, come to speak to _you." Even through his drunken, wavering vision, he saw that she smiled almost evilly, relishing his torment. "But if you would prefer, I could defer him until the morning…"_

"_No…" Pulling himself to his feet, Quintus swayed vaguely in the direction of his chambers. "Let our visitor know that I will speak with him, after I have…prepared myself a little."_

Julia's stepfather. The man's face was entirely unfamiliar to him, and yet his explanation of himself, spoken before Quintus's senses had fully returned, made perfect sense. Were Antoninus not so obviously good hearted, his host might have despised him for a spineless worm. Exactly the sort of terrible father who would do nothing to prevent his daughter risking her reputation and even her life every night by leaving their home, under his very nose. 

If this is a good man, Quintus mused bitterly, then I am fortunate to be bad.

"You are welcome here, sir," he began, trying his utmost to stand upright and avoid rocking from side to side. "Will you join me inside, where we may converse more comfortably?"

"I cannot – I apologise. But I must finish this as quickly as possible." Antoninus's expression seemed grotesque. Quintus could plainly envisage it as it might be ordinarily: his handsomely oversized features relaxed and constantly smiling. The hardness in his eyes, formed of anger and protectiveness he was not usually given to, replaced by unchanging love and trust. For Julia.

"...As you wish, sir. How may I help you?"

"I have a daughter," the other man replied abruptly, as if expelling the words before they should disappear. "But you well know of her, don't you? I came here to inform you that she and I are leaving together as soon as possible. Returning home, I should say, where her mother and myself may keep watch over her with more vigilance. This city is corrupting to young women. A cesspool…it sullies and then kills them. They are too delicate for this place."

Quintus shook his head slowly, his body turning numb. Nothing Antoninus said was untrue in the least – bar his assertion of women being delicate. Women were stronger than men. This city forced them to be. Nevertheless, in common every living thing, each woman had a breaking point.

Antoninus barely paused long enough to allow his host to respond. "I pray the Gods that Julia is not sullied, you see. I could not bear for her to give her birthright away for the sake of a liaison with some unworthy fool. So, I must take her home."

"As you wish," Quintus repeated and then paused, feeling the chilly night winds gusting ominously around them, as if carrying some unpleasant prophecy. "What have your plans to do with me, sir?"

He laughed heartily for what seemed an eternity. "You pretend that you will not be sorry to see Julia leave? Oh, I should like very much to see both of you grieve yourselves to madness for your idiocy! You in particular, for you are the reason we must go. The majority of the reason, in any case."

"Before you make these decisions," Quintus cut in swiftly, "you must understand that I never meant to discredit your daughter in any way! She is merely a dear friend of mine, whatever you might have heard of us, or whatever she might have told you…"

Antoninus laughed again, almost drunkenly. "She has told me nothing! No confessions, not even the merest hint of her activities has passed her pretty lips. No, I was forced to make my own enquiries as to her whereabouts on those evenings when I would find her bed empty. What I discovered was most unsavoury…the reasons for that, sir, you will be aware of."

"I am guilty," Quintus said simply, his throat closing up with the beginnings of tears. His eyes stinging, he added desperately, "I have harmed the girl, I know, though to what extent, I fear to guess. I had my reasons, and many years ago, they seemed to be good ones! But it is finished now, and she is of no use…"

"No use?" Antoninus blinked several times. "Of course she is of no use to you! She is _mine. She belongs to me until she marries!"_

"_Paterfamilias," Quintus murmured under his breath._

"Indeed. Know this, sir: you will never see or speak to Julia ever again. Not while I live. She will never belong to you."

"I am aware of that. I bid you goodnight, sir."

"Wait, please!" Antoninus said suddenly, his expression falling into a grimace. He had begun to tremble uncontrollably. "I need you to assure me, at least, that you honestly cared for her. Please."

The request was not in the least odd or difficult for Quintus to answer. The words had been swimming around his mind since the last time he had seen her.

"You are the most fortunate man alive, sir. You love her purely, because you cannot see or ever discover her secrets – the ones that not even she can comprehend. I must always be aware of it, and yet…I have never aspired to marry Julia. But I do love her. That is the truth."


	20. XIX

The villa had been there home for all of six months Leanne Bibby Normal Leanne Bibby 2 322 2001-11-01T19:40:00Z 2001-11-01T19:40:00Z 1 3025 13826 Widnes Sixth Form College 246 92 16759 10.2625 Clean Clean MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 st1:*{behavior:url(#ieooui) } /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman";} 

The villa had been their home for all of six months. Saying farewell, nevertheless, was as difficult as if they had lived a decade within its walls. Antoninus loaded their belongings onto the back of his cart, listening all the time to Julia's weeping through a nearby window as she packed up her own things. Early that morning, she had insisted upon rising to clean the house from top to bottom, almost ritualistically. He had simply kept out of her way, not wishing to disturb any process she had to go through in order to make her own clean break with the past.

            He himself had been euphoric with anticipation of the end of their journey, and his reunion with Diana. He pictured the situation down to every last detail: how much healthier she would look, the tone of her skin, the length of her hair, how she would feel when he held her in his arms. Their marriage would begin again, exactly as blissfully as it had on their wedding day. He almost fancied he could smell the land beneath their perfect country villa, and feel the long, dry grasses crunching underneath his feet as he hurried to be with her.

            She would be pleased to see Julia again, of course, but also disappointed that she was as yet without a husband. Antoninus would explain his failure in settling her as fully as was prudent, omitting, naturally, the most distressing details. She need never find those out once the girl was safe, being cared for by both her parents.

            Seating himself in the front of the cart and proudly taking up the reins, he called out Julia's name once, waiting for her to join him. When she at length appeared, carrying a bag of personal articles in one hand and her jewellery box in the other, he was horrified by her appearance. 

Her face, marred by a frown of resignation, was deathly white, and her amber eyes seemingly shrunk to half their splendid size by the severe and darkened swelling around them.

            Had he not known better, her stepfather might have assumed that she was mortally ill.

            He immediately climbed down from his own seat, hurrying around the vehicle to assist her in making her way up. She sighed deeply, accepting his proffered arms and hauling her stiffened body upon the wooden bench. When she was comfortable, or as comfortable as she was going to get, she smiled thinly and nodded her thanks in his direction.

            Antoninus concentrated on keeping his eye on the road ahead as their journey slowly began. Beside him, however, Julia unwittingly held his attention; her head bobbed up and down alarmingly, her eyes opening and closing as if she were slipping in and out of slumber. 

            "My dear, are you well? Is there anything I may get for you?"

            "Yes," she replied, her voice loud and robust as ever and horribly inconsistent with her corpse-like appearance. "I would like a friend who will not judge me, and who will listen to my troubles and teach me about life without demanding anything in return!"

            At this, Antoninus felt his blood boil, the good humour he had striven to preserve the whole morning disappearing in an instant. "Silence, girl!" he hissed, pushing the horses on suddenly faster. "You will cease speaking of these matters now, as we have discussed. Now, is there anything you truly require?"

            Her teeth chattering with contained rage, she shook her head.

            "Very well. Now you will behave yourself." 

            Several minutes later, Julia reached into the bag she had placed beside her feet to remove a roll of unused parchments, which she opened out upon her knee. Her stepfather fought the temptation to remove his gaze from the land before them to see what she intended to do with them, especially when she took out a piece of charcoal and began drawing, or so it appeared.

            "Do you remember the last journey we took here together?" she asked him abruptly, still scratching upon the parchment. 

            "Yes," he answered testily. "Why do you ask?"

            "Do you remember when I told you about the soldier I had seen, twice? You thought I had imagined him, because there are no soldiers in the country…"

            He sucked in his breath, becoming more disturbed with every word she said. Perhaps she _was ill. He had heard of people rambling when they were very sick._

            "What is this about, dear? Are you certain you are well?"

            "I am in good health. I only wished to tell you that a friend informed me not so long ago that my soldier was very much alive once. A hero of the Empire, no less. He told me many things that made me feel less abnormal…"

            "Speaking of one of your friends, Julia, I visited Quintus yesterday night." As soon as he had spoken the words, Antoninus wished them unsaid. He had never intended to inform her of his fruitless meeting with her clandestine companion. Craning his neck to discern her reaction, his anger rushed to the fore once again.

            She stared straight ahead, feigning petulant ignorance. Unable to concentrate on where they were going, he pulled the horses to a violent halt, making the whole vehicle shudder. 

            "I know that he asked you to be his wife. You defied me by going out to meet with him, as you know. He courted you even as he already kept one concubine within his house! Did you know that? Did he request that all of you live together that way?"

            Letting out a cry, she glowered at him. He ignored her.

"I understand now that I am foolish man, Julia, but I am not so much so that I would ever see you wed to such a creature as would treat women in such a manner. He courted you – if your trysting with him could possibly be called a courtship – and asked for your hand without consulting me, to whom you will always ultimately belong. I might have allowed it if he had done so. You must be married sometime. Else I don't know what we will do with you."

"I meant no harm by it!" she shrieked, throwing up her hands, as soon as he was silent. He speedily took the opportunity to look at the parchment in her lap. It was covered in writing – actual letters and words, forming sentences he was able to read from where he sat. When their eyes met again, he saw that hers, molten gold and flashing green, were brimming with tears.

"He taught you to write?" 

"And read. The only bad thing, seeing as you think it so terrible, that he ever did to me."

Antoninus watched dumbly then as she picked up her belongings and swiftly pulled herself down and out of the cart, as though he had struck her. Perhaps he had. Somewhere in that part of herself she had only just begun to discover, which no one, barely herself, could ever completely comprehend.

"What…where are you going?" With no small measure of humiliation, he heard the sudden weakness in his own voice, where seconds before he had come so close to properly disciplining her, perhaps for the first time.

"Nowhere!" she snapped. "I want to go back. I have to stay there."

He could not force her to go home with him. As her stepfather, under the law, he had every right to, of course, but it was somehow impossible. She was not his blood child; sometimes he even doubted that she was Diana's.

Julia's demands quickly turned into sobbing pleas.

"Rome is my home now! If you take me back, I will die. Please, sir! I will do anything you say. I will never disobey you again."

Antoninus remembered clearly his days watching Julia grow, from the precocious five-year-old she had been when he and her mother first met, to the unsettled woman she now was. During the weeks that followed their aborted journey home, he felt as though he were watching the entire process beginning anew. She went out of her way to please him and cause as few problems as possible. She shocked him.

            He had thought to take her with him everywhere he went to reassure himself always about where she was. Though he found there was no need, for the first day she had assured him that, now the servants had been dismissed, she would manage the household entirely on her own. He had grudgingly decided to give her that one chance. That evening, returning home full of apprehension and genuine fear that he would find her disappeared – eloped with Quintus, no doubt – he found the villa spotless, the baking, washing and sewing done, and the horses cared for. He had not thought her to possess such skills, given her staunch idleness in the past.

            This morning, they took a meal together outside, the temperate sun beating down like a good omen. Antoninus found that he had ceased at last to look at his stepdaughter and automatically feel nauseous, wondering in precisely what ways Quintus, and who knew how many other men, had enjoyed her. She was Diana's baby to him once more, in these irreplaceable moments of peace between them.

            She wore her hair loose and her simplest clothes – and for the first time since she was a child, not one piece of jewellery adorned her. It quickly occurred to him why this was. Finery reminded her of wealth, and wealth of Quintus.

            "I think I should like to go out riding this evening," she said mildly, cutting a piece of fruit in half so that they might share it. "Could you escort me? If you are not too tired, I mean."

            He raised his eyebrows, smiling. "Certainly I will."

            They fell into companionable silence, Julia humming quietly as she handed him his portion of fruit and began to nibble on her own. Her stepfather watched her proudly, confident she was daydreaming, and so would not notice.

            "You do look pretty today, dear. I wish your mother could see how beautiful you have grown since we left."

            She visibly stiffened at this mention of Diana. Smiling almost mechanically, she rose from where she knelt upon the grass and started to clear away the uneaten food. "I will fetch you some things to take with you."

            He opened his mouth to protest, but at that moment they were interrupted by the sound of horses' hooves approaching the other side of the villa.

            "Who could that possibly be?" Julia piped, clearly panicked a little. Antoninus, with relief, took this as prove that their visitor had nothing to do with her.

            Or did he? Approaching the road that passed by them, Antoninus called out, "Who's there?" He almost wept with relief when a young man rode towards him, holding out a folded, sealed piece of parchment. Walking towards the courier, smiling congenially, he silently thanked the Gods for allowing them to continue living in peace, without the past creeping up on them.

            "Deliver this to the lady of the house, if you will, sir," the boy requested, equally affably, passing the letter to Antoninus.

            The other man froze, bile rising up into his throat. "The lady of the house is my stepdaughter."

            "Yes, sir. My master sends both of you his warmest regards."

*          *          *

Julia enjoyed the noisy crowds of the Roman market, even managing to tolerate the stench of horse manure and other filth, as well as the clouds of dust flying skyward with every passing traveller. At various stalls she stopped to buy numerous essentials and exchange pleasantries with their owners, relishing the experience which Antoninus had denied her in recent days. Now, she was ecstatic to note, he was beginning to trust her completely again. They had slid back into their old routine, that monotony which had once infuriated her, and it suited her almost perfectly.

            At one stall, she stopped to purchase sewing materials, and glanced into the basket she carried before placing them inside. Her heart began to race as she did. A piece of parchment had caught her eye, and from what she could tell, it had been written upon. A single word, in a fine, dignified hand – her name.

            Suddenly alarmed that someone might see her taking it out, she hurried around a small building to a hot, secluded, dusty area before steeling herself to do so. For the moment, she did not question how it could possibly have made its way to the bottom of her basket, so fixated was she on the fact that it could have come from no other person except Quintus. Only he, aside from Antoninus, knew that she was able to read. Out of his goodness, he had taught her to.

            The parchment was fine and velvety; tears welled in her eyes as she rubbed her fingertips over its surface, looking at the inscription again and recognising his hand for certain. Tentatively, as though it might tear with the slightest roughness, she pulled away the small amount of wax sealing it up, and hungrily began to read.

_My dearest lady,_

_            I have no means of knowing whether or not you will receive this missive before you leave Rome, for as you will know, you stepfather paid me a visit not five days ago to inform me of your imminent departure. I must pray that you will, for I will not rest without having had the opportunity to tell you how deeply sorry I am for all the pain I have caused you. No words could express how desolate I feel in your absence, and wretched in the knowledge that I can never see you again. Dear Julia, you must know that every word I spoke at our last meeting was the truth, and every proposal made honestly and of a pure heart. I understand, however, that you very rightly were in no position to accept any of them. I wish that our acquaintance may have continued, so that I might have witnessed you attaining the happiness you deserve, but I have ultimately decided that I must achieve some further advancement before I die. To this end, I have decided to re-enter the army and serve our emperor, Septimus Severus, in whatever rank I am able to. Now I bid you farewell, my lady, and wish you every possible happiness in your life to come. _

_Your servant and friend,_

_Q_

She found that she was unable to shed a single tear, though she longed to cry torrents. So Antoninus had forbidden Quintus ever to meet with her again. He had not written her to beg her forgiveness and ask that she return to him – he wished only to say goodbye. 

            The basket slipped from her arm, suddenly gone limp. Why was she this devastated anyway? She had never loved Quintus as a woman must love a man. He had never been anything more than a friend to her. The dearest friend she had ever been able to call her own. 

A swell of nausea gripped her as she tried to stand up, stuffing the letter into the basket as she gathered it up. The short walk back to the villa would be agony. Once there, moreover, she would have to face some awkward questions from her stepfather. He had certainly planted it where she would find it.

            Walking was even more difficult than she had anticipated; her balance swayed and her nerves made her tremble as Quintus's words replayed themselves in her head. Forcing her back to remain straight, she pushed on laboriously, before a sudden tap on her shoulder made her flinch painfully.

            "_Yes?" she hissed, swinging around to glare at the man who had stopped her. _

            "I apologise, Madam, I meant only to offer you some assistance…you seemed a little unsteady on your feet. Are you well?"

            Her frown fell away as she observed his earnest and truly concerned expression. He was middle-aged, though handsome, clean and impressively attired considering the poverty all around them. Against her better judgement, Julia was impressed and gladdened that he, of all people in the area, had approached her.

            "I am quite well, sir. Only a little…fatigued. I am sorry if I startled you."

            He smiled broadly, his eyes shining as though he were truly honoured to meet her. She stared, quizzically, for a second or two.

            "Might I carry your basket for you anyway? I would be happy to escort you home. These surroundings are unsuitable, really, for any human being, least of all a lady like yourself."

            She chucked, forgetting how miserable she had so recently been. The letter inside the basket may as well have never existed. "Oh, you needn't, really. It contains only some small articles I purchased earlier, but…all right!"

            He had all but removed it from her grasp without her permission, so she allowed him. She realised that, spending so much time alone, she had begun to crave society badly. This gentleman was as good as any, she reasoned, for conversation.

            "Might I know your name, seeing as we will walk together?"

            The gentleman grinned again as they began their journey, holding the basket with one arm and linking the other with hers in order to support her. Then, however, he seemed to grow nervous, swallowing twice before he could speak. "I am Marius."

            "Marius…" she rolled the name over in her mouth and, finding it to her taste, continued, "I am Julia. You may address me as such."

            "Thank you. I will."

            She stole a number of discreet glances at him as they trod out beside the road. He was dark-haired and dark-skinned, she noticed. Like Antoninus, only plainly younger and more gregarious. 

            Antoninus. She had done a terrible thing, she realised, in making him stay with her in Rome. He needed Diana again; yet she needed Rome. She could not remain there alone, releasing him to be once again with his wife._ She could not remain there alone…_


	21. XX

The betrothal of Julia and Marius was formal, much more so than was customary for Romans of their lowly class. Three short weeks later, Julia was married.

            Their courtship had been short, but decisive. He was a gentleman, though rather coarse and uncouth, and she had no doubt that he cared deeply for her. That was enough. He was perfect for her purpose.

Her twentieth birthday had come and gone. She and Antoninus argued frequently, in between periods of pleasant but precarious harmony between them, over her future. He had often lost his temper, fighting it down until he trembled with rage, terrifying and humiliating her all at once.

            "Life is short, girl! No man will want a wife if she will have little time in which to bear his children. If you dally any longer, before you know it, it will be too late for you."

            His words, though hardly striking any maternal chord within her, had almost made her despise him. Had he not married Diana when she was middle aged? She had never borne him a child and almost certainly never would, even were they soon to be reunited. In spite of this, however, Julia had made it her duty to rectify the wrong she had done her mother and stepfather in ever demanding that they part company to suit her wishes. If she had to, she would make a marriage of her own, so that her mother might have her husband back by her side.

            From the beginning, Antoninus had plainly hated her choice, for some reason she could hardly tell. The two men, she noticed with trepidation, had barely spoken civilly to one another as the agreements for the betrothal had gone ahead. She had merely sat in feminine silence, whenever she was called to bear witness to any of their decisions. Committing herself to such a disagreeable estate as marriage was confusing enough without having to discern what possible grudge they bore one another.

            The last few nights of her maidenhood had been agonising. She could not, she realised, wed with Marius without discovering at least some of the truth. One evening, she waited for Antoninus to approve the day's housekeeping she had accomplished, meaning to discuss some things with him when he did. Then, sick to her stomach with dread, she faced him.

            "Sir? I would speak with you about my marriage. There are some things I must know."

            He sat hunched at a table in his quarters, breathing deeply, as if speaking to her would prove an effort. Finally, he turned to her, forcing a smile, his eyes slightly glassy. "Not long to go now, my dear, is there? What must you know?"

            Biting down on her lip, she gathered her skirts, perching on the edge of his bed as though fearing it would break if she sat too heavily. In truth, she was so tense that her body hurt. "I have noticed, that although you approve of me agreeing to marry…"

            "Julia! Oh, Julia," he interrupted, facing her properly. "I cannot tell you how happy I am that you will soon be settled. It is the right thing. It is what myself and your mother have prayed for ever since you came of age. Do not worry that you have ever caused us any pain, for when you are married, I cannot tell you how much better we will feel."

            She tried to smile, but could not. "I understand that. But I have noticed…that you do not care for Marius. Do you honestly wish for my husband to be someone you dislike so? It puzzles me."

            "I do not dislike Marius." Pausing for a long moment, Antoninus sighed, and when he spoke again, his voice was weaker. "Although, I cannot but be honest with you. He is a businessman, as I am, and in the past…we have had some unhappy dealings. But he is a good man, an intelligent and self-sufficient man, who loves you. He will care for you better than some others would have."

            Julia's cheeks flamed, and she lowered her eyes. "Thank you for your confidence, sir." She rose and moved to exit the room swiftly.

            "My dear?" her stepfather said suddenly, a noticeably placating manner in his tone causing her to halt, and listen.

            "Yes?"

            "I will miss you very much, you do know that, don't you? You are my child now, and I love you. You have been everything a daughter should, and I know you will bring just as much order and concord to Marius's home as you have brought to this one. Only promise me that you will be happy, dearest Julia."

            She crept towards him, tears spilling down her face, smiling with immeasurable gratitude and love. Before her was the sweetest, noblest, most forgiving man she had ever known or ever would know. When he took her hand and kissed it, his own eyes shining, she leaned forward to touch his forehead gently with her own lips. "I love you too," she whispered.

            Taking both her hands in his, he squeezed them, making no attempt to hide his regret at seeing her leave. "Now go and get some rest. You have your wedding to prepare for."

*          *          *

Marius's heart pounded so fast and so hard as he transported his wife to their marital home, his impressive villa in a thriving, fairly wealthy area of Rome, that he felt sure she must be able to hear it. The weeks leading up to their wedding, the ritual having taken place that morning, had seemed like an impossible, wonderful dream to him.

            Julia, however, her slender arm hooked trustingly through his as he pushed the wagon onward, seemed tangible enough. She still wore the simple though hideously expensive linen garments she had donned specially for her marriage, a gift from her stepfather. In her new husband's eyes, she did not need such finery to be the most beautiful creature he had ever laid eyes on. Now she was his…today was the first day of their life together.

            Every time he thought of the irony of the situation, he longed to laugh out loud. Diana's daughter, a woman half his age, his wife. The Gods had played a fiendish trick in deigning this fate for him. Though he was not complaining – not at all. Every moment, he thought he might explode with love for her, and amazed gratitude that she had so readily accepted his proposal when they had been walking together as a couple a matter of mere weeks.

            Just as the perfect Roman sky turned cerulean with approaching dusk, they reached the villa. Julia struggled to contain yawns of exhaustion, occasionally venturing to rest her palla-covered head upon his shoulder. 

            "Darling?" he murmured, drawing the horses to a stop. Putting down the reins in his lap, he wrapped both arms gently around her. "Are you tired?"

            "I feel as though I have not slept in days." With barely-concealed irritation, she pushed his arms away, helping herself down from the wagon. "I am longing for bed now."

            He watched her intently as she dusted down her skirts, sucking in his breath at the sight of the fine fabric enveloping her body. This woman, his wife. Though her lady's modesty would never allow for him to tell her so, he longed for their bed much more than she did. She was still pure, without doubt. Even in these debauched times, such epitomes of feminine nobility and virtue almost always_ kept themselves for their lawful husbands. _

            "Wait," he admonished softly, moving to follow her. "I will show you our home. I know you will like it."

            By now, Julia had seen the house for herself, and was drinking in the sight. The building was an outpost of his once-wealthy family's miniature empire, which had stretched across the city. The area was developing and thriving with business, as well as being one of the most beautiful Rome had to offer.

            Turning to him with a smile of gleeful gratitude, she took his proffered arm, and allowed him to lead her towards the gates. Further out into the sizeable plot of land surrounding the house, perfect silence greeted their homecoming, save the whinnying of a horse and, private to Marius, a fervent prayer of thanks.

*          *          *

Julia retired early, as she had planned, while a golden sunset bathed the villa of which she was now mistress. Sat up in her marital bed, however, scrawling on a piece of parchment in her lap, she was unable to settle. A humiliating sense of nervousness gripped her, a hundred curiously unanswered questions whirring inside her head.

            Was the wife expected not to sleep until her husband joined her? Whatever the case, she did not wish to sleep. Not anymore. Other, more pertinent uncertainties presented themselves – those she was much less willing to try to answer.

            She swallowed, wondering why she suddenly felt so nauseous, and lay down, settling her head into a lusciously deep-filled pillow. Her eyes closing, and sleep gradually overcame her like a heavy blanket. How long she remained that way, she could not tell. Eventually, Marius caused her to wake with a start by placing a heavy hand below her throat.

            Momentarily disoriented, she lifted her head and saw that he had joined her in their bed. Smiling, she started to move away from him as unobtrusively as possible.

            He caught her arm, his eyes never leaving hers. She raised her eyebrows, challenging him, it seemed, to take charge. Her heart thumped almost painfully against the confines of her chest as her husband took the papers and charcoal from her hands, dropping them carelessly to the floor. Disgusted with herself, she realised how attractive she found him; how unwilling she was to prevent what was about to happen. Even when he pinioned her against the bed, she squealed her delight, closing her eyes tightly and imagining herself elsewhere.

            The pain was over as quickly as it had come. Julia was a woman; a priceless artefact of a bygone age, as Quintus had assured her. The linen sheets clinging to her skin with perspiration were garments of silk and cloth of gold. This was not a royal palace. What she felt for Marius was not love. But she could always dream that they were.

*          *          *

Antoninus swore to himself, struggling to force open the door of the provincial villa he had not set foot inside for far too long. Striking it mercilessly with his booted foot, he shouted his wife's name. The light footsteps issuing then from inside the house met his ears like the sweetest music. 

            The door creaked open, revealing her brown eyes widened with momentary suspicion. He did not give her chance to greet him, pushing his way into the house and sweeping her small, curvaceous body into his embrace. Her arms locked around his neck in a vice grip as her warm tears spilled down his neck. She was strong and healthy; even as he held her, neither saying a word, he absorbed her vigour into himself, and wondered at the change in her since they had last been together.

            "You are well at last, my darling," he whispered into her thick hair, carrying her through to their bedchamber."

            "Not entirely," she told him, burying her face in his neck. "It was merely delight in awaiting your homecoming that makes me so. And some herbs I began growing. I needed to find many things to occupy my time in your absence."

            They passed the remainder of the day in happy solitude. The few servants in the villa knew what was expected of them: to leave their master and mistress in peace as they went about their duties, for as long as they required to make up for the time they had lost. Late in the evening, Diana lay curled beside her dozing husband, watching the last slivers of orange sunset through a window.

            She thought of Julia, shivering with an inexplicable sense of failure and dread. Antoninus had sent word to her that Julia had married a decent man of good reputation, and though the news had made her happy, still the thought of her living such a distance away and with a man unknown to her was disturbing.

            Turning onto her side, she gently shook Antoninus to wake him. He opened his eyes, squinted to see her, and his frown broke into a smile of adoration.

            "How does my daughter?" she asked him, without preamble. "How did she choose her husband? Does she truly love him, or did she feel she had to wed so that you could return home."

            He awoke fully, his gaze widening, under her barrage of questions.

            "You need not worry for her. He is settled, prosperous and well-respected, and he has been a good friend to her. She is very fond of him, but most importantly, my dear, he worships her. It is a good match."

            Diana smiled, settling herself back into his arms, with which he enfolded her tightly. Much as she respected her husband's opinion, however, she would not be able to rest fully until she had more proof of Julia's contentment.


	22. XXI

It seemed ironic, Julia found, that she and Marius had vowed eternal togetherness, and yet she spent so much of her time alone. His company, however, was not always pleasant, particularly when they retired to bed each night. She could not become accustomed, however much she tried, to the things married couples did together.

The first time, she had found the process fascinating, even enjoyable. Then the bloodstains on her nightdress and a sheer, overwhelming sense of shame had horrified her. Marius, holding her and telling her she was beautiful, extraordinary, his love, made her feel somewhat better. Nevertheless, her reactions never deterred him from continuing to make demands of her.

It all seemed so…untidy. Moreover, she never thought about her husband as she lay in his arms, feigning pleasure and adoration. She thought of the home in the countryside she would never return to. The vivid dreams she had long since stopped experiencing. Even, on occasion, of Quintus.

She had not dreamt of her soldier Maximus, or of the lady, since the last time she had seen Quintus. He was, as well as, the only true friend she had never known, her lost link to all of those things.

The villa was almost palatial – exploring it daily, she found, provided some measure of solace in her loneliness. Respectable wives, she had discovered with some devastation, were allowed even less freedom than unmarried girls. She kept her diary obsessively, and appropriated most of the servants' duties until they were almost being paid for doing nothing. 

A horridly short time passed before she realised that her life was purely a routine. She had been waiting for changes that would never arrive. Her beautiful home became nothing more than a splendid prison, and the one person who might rescue her from it did not even know where she was.

Mercifully, as though the Gods had seen her growing misery and sought to relieve it, a friend literally arrived on her doorstep when she had been married two months.

            Julia had slept too late, stirring to the feeling of wetness on her cheeks and lips, no doubt the remnants of Marius's parting kisses. She had to credit him with being diligent at his work as a carpenter, rising early and coming home late, though his displays of affection at his departures and returns made her uncomfortable to say the least. This morning, just the knowledge that he had touched her while she lay unconscious and defenceless made her even more sick than usual.

            "Madam?" a servant girl trilled, tapping on her door. "There is a visitor to see you, a Mistress Livia by name."

            Livia was the wife of a poor merchant, a neighbour of theirs, who disapproved of his lady calling on those even slightly wealthier than they. Her independence and disregard of her spouse's wishes, nay orders, made her notorious all around Rome, though she remained well-loved by everyone. Tales of her good humour and generosity preceded those of her supposed indecency everywhere she went.

            Julia dressed swiftly, having instructed the maid to show their guest into the dining chamber, where breakfast had been laid out. A smile frozen on her face, she relished the anticipation she felt at shortly holding audience with the lady. Incredulity gripped her briefly as she remembered her past aversion to female camaraderie, until she realised the reason for her sudden joy: she admired Livia, her passion and sweetness, completely without jealousy. No other woman had impressed her so before – except, of course, the lady in her dreams.

            Audaciously, Livia had seated herself at the table without first awaiting her hostess. The sight caused Julia to blush and cover her mouth, stifling a laugh, as she entered the room to join her.

            "Darling! How wonderful to meet you properly at last." 

            Her voice filled the chamber like the ringing of a bell, delighting Julia so much that she failed to notice this second breach of decorum, Livia having addressed her before she had had chance to speak.

            "It is wonderful to meet _you, Mistress," she began with uncharacteristic timidity, stepping forwards as the other woman rose from her seat, holding out both arms, and hurried faster towards her. _

            "You look beautiful! Married life must be suiting you very well." Livia placed both hands on either Julia's elbows, and kissed her once on each cheek. Not the slight, cool brushing of lips she had been accustomed to, either – and unrestrained display of genuine affection. She blushed even more, stiffening. Sensing her discomfort, Livia unhanded her, smiling genially all the time.

            "You must call me Livia, my dear. Formalities, I have found, are simply not worth the trouble."

            Julia laughed, forgetting herself finally. "Will you eat with me, Livia? I apologise that I did not rise sooner so that I might have laid the table myself, but my servants do well, I think."

            "I think they do also. Your household is immaculate, if I may say, and I would like nothing better than to share your meal."

            They sat down to eat, small talk continuing, until Julia noticed her guest eyeing her curiously, a small smile playing her pretty, well-formed mouth. Livia was past middle age, and though not nearly as comely as Diana, still very attractive. Her loose-fitting tunica did little to beautify her ample figure, spoiled by multiple pregnancies, however her magnetic and loving disposition made it easy for Julia to believe the popular rumour that her husband had stayed faithful to her throughout their long marriage.

            "Why do you stare at me?" she asked the lady, smiling quizzically and narrowing her eyes.

            "I have been longing to speak with you ever since I heard of your arrival," Livia replied, slicing a small loaf of bread before her and apparently ignoring the question. "I do not suppose you know of all the talking that went on about you. It lasted weeks – everyone wanted a glimpse of Marius's lovely and refined little bride. You fascinated people, Julia, and now I see why."

            "I…am confused! Why did everyone talk?"

            Livia reached across the table to squeeze her hand companionably. "For no reason you should not be proud of. Quite simply, you are the most beautiful and educated woman we have ever been fortunate enough to know. You are mysterious. Everyone would like to know your secrets, though I am not insinuating that you have any! You are obviously as virtuous as you are exquisite."

            "Did you tell the talkers that, Livia?"

            The lady tilted her head backwards, chuckling heartily. "Many times, my dear!"

            Julia smiled until her face ached, looking coyly down at her untouched breakfast. It cheered her more than she could comprehend at that moment that, even if she barely showed herself outside her own home, at least dwellers of the outside world were aware of her existence.

            "Strange," Livia noted suddenly. "You invited me to eat _with you, and I appear to be eating all on my own."_

            Julia gazed wide-eyed at her friend who, unbeknown to her, found her innocence all at once charming and disturbing.

            "You will be ill, my dear. You are too pale."

            "I fear I already am ill," Julia murmured, seeing no reason anymore to be anything but completely honest with her guest. "I do not care for food in the mornings anymore. Sometimes…I even vomit. Without warning, when I am at my sewing, or supervising the servants…"

            Her voice trailed off as she noticed Livia's exultant smile.

Marius often arrived home hours after the time she expected him, drunk. This suited her well, for she gradually became accustomed to long hours of solitude, alleviated as they were by Livia's frequent visits. It was while her husband was completely soused that she informed him that she was pregnant, expecting him not to remember come the morning. Incredibly, he did.

            Impending fatherhood gave him even more reason to celebrate, both with alcohol and with her. In their bed, oddly, he remained every bit as insatiable, even as she had nursed a vain hope that now, he would leave her alone occasionally. 

            Livia had assisted her in calculating when she would give birth. Were it not for the other woman's vast store of knowledge, as well as her constant support and encouragement, Julia wondered how she would have coped. She had known that being married would almost invariably entail becoming a mother, although she had never looked forward to the prospect. Children had never held much interest for her. Her progressing condition, moreover, provided no end of discomfort and humiliation.

            The majority of each day, including this one, she had spent vomiting. Livia had clapped her hands with joy upon hearing of the first flutterings within her young friend's belly, but to Julia herself they were nothing but a nuisance and a painful reminder of things to come. 

            Sipping a cupful of water, she sat hunched over her diary. Until recently, she had filled page after page with mournful eulogies on the past she had lost. Now she documented the future she dreaded. 

            A loud banging on the door caused her heart to leap with gladness. It was usual for Livia to surprise and embarrass her, as she loved to do, by calling on her first thing in the morning, though she had surely calculated this midday visit as a pleasant surprise. Julia hurried to let her in, swallowing to repress a fresh wave of nausea.

            Pulling open the door, however, she was greeted with the sight of Quintus.

            "Oh!" she yelped, instinctively jumping backwards.

            He looked extremely old, as though he had aged twenty years since they had last met. Exhaustion lay etched in every feature, his face white and haggard and his hair and beard overgrown. His smile seemed forced, and when he held out his hands in greeting, she saw that they were shaking. Nevertheless, after overcoming her initial horror at seeing him, she was overpowered by elation.

            "How did you find me?" she blurted out, unable to find any other words.

            "Julia, do you not know that you, and your movements around this city are legendary?"

            Glancing around them, she clutched his arms and pulled him inside the doorway. "I have been told, if you must know."

            Unable to stop herself, she pressed her hands to either side of his face, as if to reassure herself that he was tangible, really there. Sudden tears blurred her vision.

            "I couldn't help it," he said softly, making no move to prevent the contact she had made with him. "I discovered your location only this morning. Just when I had thought you gone from…Rome, forever. I would have sent a message, but I had no wish to anger your husband…"

            "Marius cares not what I do or with whom I communicate!" she interjected urgently, her voice trembling. "As long as I am in his bed when he returns he is happy." Her face flamed as she regretted this crude admission, and she hung her head as she continued, "When did you learn of my marriage?"

            "Almost as soon as the deed was done. I hope that you are contented now, my dear. I have heard also that you will shortly be blessed with a child."

            Julia managed an ironic laugh, her cheeks still burning. "So my neighbours discuss such things so freely? The thought is hardly a comfort."

            His gaze had not left hers during the whole of this exchange, and strangely, she did not feel in the least uneasy for it. Eventually, he broke the amiable silence between them by lifting her hand and kissing it chastely, his lips barely touching her skin. She gripped his fingers with her own, all the questions she had been longing to ask him rushing to the forefront of her mind, having lain dormant for so long.

            "_You asked for my hand the last time we met," she stated bluntly, her expression hardening. "It terrified me. Why did you do it?"_

            Quintus sighed deeply, his brow furrowing. "My esteem for you, and great, selfish naivety, almost drove me to madness. I sought your approval of myself in the only way I could imagine. I have long since realised what unforgivable folly it all was. I am an old man – too old for such things as marriage."

            "Not so!" she reassured him weakly, bowing her head once more. The time when assurances might have affected her friend in any positive way had clearly long since passed.

            "Thank you, my dear, but I did not come here to dwell on these matters with you. There is something else I must ask of you, a proposal I believe you will be more willing to accept than the last."

            Her heart leaped involuntarily. She had craved desperately some new event in her life, whether good or bad, to occupy her mind. Besides, of course, all the unpleasantness attached to her pregnancy. "You must sit with me; then we will discuss whatever you wish!"

            "I cannot…but I thank you again. I will not intrude inside your home longer than is necessary. The matter is…a friend of mine, a very wealthy and potentially very powerful man, who has been longing to meet you, for reasons I cannot share with you just yet. May he visit you?"

            "He wishes to meet _me?" she said, frowning even though excitement and anticipation threatened to engulf her._

            "Yes. When may he come?"

            "Tomorrow," she informed Quintus quickly, "if he is able. At this time. My husband need never know of it; as I have said, he cares not what I do."


	23. XXII

A very wealthy and potentially very powerful man, wishing to meet the mere wife of an ordinary carpenter. Julia asked herself no questions about the prospect; the simple pleasure of its existence was enough to deter any uncertainty about it. It exceeded even her exultation at being reunited with Quintus. 

She only began to wonder at the ludicrousness of the situation when she laid eyes upon the gentleman, Quintus's friend, for the first time. The previous night, she had dreamt vividly, gloriously, of the beautiful silent lady again. Consequently, all morning long she had been in a joyful daze, only sporadically spoiled by fears of Marius suddenly appearing, breaking the spell with his status as her husband and symbol of her mundane, stifling marriage – the reality of her life.

Her visitor was a strikingly handsome young man. He approached her home on horseback, alone, simply dressed although with the unmistakeable air of one of the patrician classes. The closer he came, nevertheless, the more she became aware that he was probably of an even higher caste than that.

Julia's breath caught in her throat, her head feeling light, as he dismounted and approached her cautiously, respectfully, one hand outstretched to take her own. His expression belied, however, his studied confidence; he was every bit as dumbstruck as his hostess, and she had no way of telling why.

 "You are welcome, sir," she said, alarmed to realise that she was deliberately holding his watery blue gaze with her own. "It is an honour. Although, Quintus did not mention why you wished to meet with me."

"The honour is mine, my lady," the gentleman replied, holding her hand tightly as he bowed over it. 

"Julia," she added quickly, absently. A cold chill had passed through at the words 'my lady', used to address her.

"Ah, yes, Julia. Your mother chose a beautiful name for you." A wistful look clouded his eyes over, only slightly marring his ecstatic expression. "I am Lucius. I wished to meet with you because I knew your mother once. When I heard that this was where you had settled, I longed to see you. Quintus has told me much about your beauty and goodness, and now I know that he spoke nothing but the truth."

She smiled broadly, unable to prevent such a show of emotion. Her anxiety gradually disappeared. Somehow, it failed to puzzle her how Diana could have known a young man of such obviously high stature. 

"When did you know my mother?"

"Long ago. Far too long ago. We cared for each other, when I was a child." His voice quietened until he was silent, and again he fixed her with a gaze of sheer awe, which, oddly, did not frighten in the least.

"Do you have a title, sir, by which I may address you?"

His genial expression fell suddenly, replaced by a look of acrimony. "No title anymore. Please use my name."

She exhaled gradually, feeling more and more comfortable with each passing second. "You must come inside with me, where we can converse in private."

"I have not seen my mother for almost a year," she found herself confessing, minutes later as she sat with her highborn guest inside the villa. "I never thanked her, or my stepfather, for granting my wish to live here in Rome. The strange thing is, I think that when I parted from her, she was glad in some way to see me go."

            "That cannot be so," Lucius interjected, frowning, and sharply breaking the polite silence he had maintained. "You are among the sweetest women I have ever met. I will not believe that she desired your departure."

            Julia smiled, appreciating his support, but at the same time asking herself how she could be having this conversation with a stranger. The answer, though she could not see it at that moment, was that he did not seem like a stranger at all. They had bonded instantaneously, it seemed. She found a kind of ease in his presence quite unlike any she had known before, even with her own family.

            "I barely even know why I desired Rome to be my home so badly. Except that, perhaps, I clung onto dreams from when I was a child of some special purpose to my life, that could only be attained in this city, the heart of the Empire. Dreams were all that they were, and no more tangible."

            "Have you an interest in politics, then?" her guest queried, somewhat incredulously. She laughed.

            "No, absolutely not. I might have, though, if only I had been tutored in such things. No, I only knew that Rome was my spiritual home, if such places exist. But I seems I belong to the countryside, inexorably. Each time I have tried to leave it, you see, I have met with…trouble. The Gods no doubt mean to keep me in my place in this way."

            A small, complacent smile formed on Lucius's face as he watched her attentively. "I am sure they do only what is right for you. This place, these lands, are Elysium itself compared with the innards of Roman palaces." He lowered his gaze to the stone floor of her parlour then, seeming completely unaware of the admission he had just made.

            "You have been to the palaces?" As Julia spoke, she realised with some mortification that she sounded enthralled.

            He looked at her, sighed, and smiled. "I grew up at the Imperial Palace."

            "Oh…well…how then can you think of _this place as Elysium?"_

            "Because it is. The palace is a cesspool unlike any other." For the first time, anger and impatience blighted his expression and his voice. Julia wished passionately that she had held her tongue for once, instead of allowing her curiosity free rein. She cursed her own fascination with the world from which Lucius claimed to come, and yet so plainly despised.

            "I'm sorry…" she began, only to be interrupted.

            "Do not be. Julia, my dear," His modified his tones, infusing them with genuine affection for her. "I did not come here to unload my burdens. But you must know that you could have hoped for no better fate than the one obviously predestined for you, here…you have everything you will ever require, and with luck, nothing will ever harm you. You will encounter nothing like the dangers I have faced almost every day of my life, simply for being who I am."

            Julia sucked in her breath, a need to contradict him overwhelming her. She longed to tell him how agonisingly trapped she felt every minute of every day within her own home. How she disliked her husband and his disgusting attentions, and how loneliness reduced her to tears unfailingly every day. How totally unready and unwilling she was to bear the child growing like a deadly cancer inside her, and what a hopeless mother she was doomed to be.

            "I hope you are correct, sir," she said quietly.

            "I am." 

Without hesitation, then, he reached out a hand to touch her face. Long, tapered fingers, almost olive in colour, passed before her eyes as he stroked one cheek, then the other. She thought, absently, how strangely like her own hands they were, and how no one had ever touched her this gently before. There was nothing at all erotic, reproachful or demanding in these ministrations; only simple and tender expression of his love. The love he bore for her even though until today they had been strangers to one another.

            Closing her eyes, she felt a tiny stray tear escape down her face. Shivering, she wiped it away, overcome with sudden and unfathomable shame, but at the same time, a delicious, warming confusion.

            "You are very dear to me, little Julia. You always have been, you know."

            So maybe he had only been a stranger to her. She met his gaze again with all the dignity she could muster, understanding nonetheless that she could not conceal the gratitude and fondness now shining in her eyes. He grinned, his own eyes glowing, making it impossible for her not to smile back. 

            "What was it like?" she asked him.

            "What was what like?"

            "Growing up at the Imperial Palace." She waited for him to slip back into the sombreness of minutes before. Incredibly, he did not.

            "It was difficult. Unbelievably so. My mother had no choice, of course, but to let powerful men commit the greatest cruelty possible and deem that her child be raised within its walls. I saw precious little of her, or indeed of anyone save my nurses or my tutors."

            "And that was the greatest cruelty possible?"

            "Yes. You can't imagine the loneliness, or the pressure to carry out duties you can barely comprehend."

            "I suppose I can't."

            "Then, there was the anxiety in everyone's eyes. The fragility of the Empire…everyone understood it. Emperor Marcus Aurelius restored some stability; his son Commodus destroyed that. There is such danger in high places, Julia. In comparison, you must understand what a haven these unsullied lands in which you live are. You do understand now, don't you?"

            "I do," she replied, relishing her own honestly. Fleetingly, she was reminded of Quintus in the way Lucius spoke to her, educating her, enlightening her. The only difference was, Quintus's words had chilled her, excited her and made her ever more desperate to truly know the world she dreamed about. Lucius confused her; when he spoke of the same Roman past as his friend had, he did so with bitterness and hatred. Whose memories were accurate – whose should she trust?

            "I hear," Lucius continued, smiling, "that you will soon have your own family. Teach your child to love his home as you do. For I know that you do, in honesty."

            _I do not want this child, she ached to cry out, but remained silent. Faithfully, dutifully silent. The infant had done no wrong in being conceived._

            The parlour grew cold, darkening as dusk descended upon the city. Julia glanced around, picturing Marius as he would look as he returned home. Most probably drunk, stumbling around, ready to embrace and kiss her whether she desired his caresses or not. The servants would leave them in peace. He had instructed them to, she knew.

            She looked towards Lucius, unable to expel the anxiousness in her face. "I am afraid you should…my husband, you see. You will not wish to be riding these country roads too late into the night."

            "I understand. My dear, please say that I may visit you again soon."

            The tears sprung up again, unbidden. "You needn't ask me that."

The idle days at the villa, when the servants took care of what little work there was to be done, proved to be a blessing to Julia as her advancing condition made her increasingly tired and sluggish. The thought of journeying by herself to the nearest marketplace, full of strangers, unpleasant sights and pungent smells, began to make her feel ill. She habituated her bed more and more often, feeling large and useless, though as comfortable as she could possibly be. Most fortunate of all, however, was Marius's increasing and surprising respect for her personal space. 

            Frequently, she was still awoken at night by her own weeping, having dreamed, most probably, of Quintus. She would not cease pining for him completely until she had seen him once more. For the time being, however, she was content to wait for that meeting to take place. Whenever she stirred beside Marius, crying after one such dream, he would hold her, never asking an questions, his lips resting upon her head and his hands stroking her belly, savouring the closeness of the infant he so looked forward to rearing along with his precious wife.

            His happiness cheered Julia immensely – it was all the proof she needed that she was _not a failure as his wife, and so far at least, as the mother of his child._

            As yet, however, he remained unaware of her frequent visits from Lucius. She could not imagine telling this new and irreplaceable friend that she could no longer see him, as in a way, she had been deceiving her husband in doing so. No, she would not give up Lucius, the closest companion she had ever known and the one she loved the most. The only one it would surely kill her to lose.

            Unlike Antoninus, he had never judged her. Unlike Quintus, he made no demands of her. Unlike Livia, he truly knew her. They were startlingly alike one another, as she had noticed more and more with each of his visits. They talked for hours, about everything and nothing, with never a trace of awkwardness between them. When he left, she felt empty once more. 

            Sometimes, she suspected that Marius knew of their friendship, however impossible it seemed. One night, he had lain beside her, dozing peacefully as she sat up, idly writing on a piece of parchment. When she had looked down at him, however, his eyes had been open, watching her intently.

            "Is something wrong?"

            "No, my darling, I was only thinking. You are so intelligent and refined…I find it hard to believe sometimes that you have lived all your life in the country."


	24. XXIII

Julia dreamt, or thought she dreamt, of men on horseback riding past the window of her bedchamber, which faced a small orchard. It was a curious kind of half-hallucination; having hardly slept all night (she rarely got any peace now that her child had begun kicking), she had no way of telling whether or not she was asleep now. Either way, she enjoyed the sound, and fancied that as well as the noise of the horses' hooves repeatedly hitting the solid ground, she heard the clatter of armour as well. She imagined the faces of the men, especially one in particular, whom she saw as clearly in her mind's eye as if he were stood before her eyes.

            Marius lay on his back, on top of the bedclothes, snoring loudly through his open mouth. Julia assumed that the stench rising from him was that of drink, stale and fresh, of some sort. Rolling over, and being careful not to disturb his coma-like state, she looked into his face. His features, although never having been particularly handsome, were undeniably pleasant to look at now, relaxed by sleep as they were. Smiling to herself, she reflected on how attractive his almost constant sneer had once been to her. Watching him look disdainfully upon other people, and imagining he could see into his equally contemptuous thoughts, was what had earned him her approval at the first. When exactly she had decided she would marry him, she could not entirely remember.

            Resting her head on one of his broad shoulders, she tried her best to keep from crying. Her enormous belly served as a constant reminder of the additional responsibilities, however unwanted and terrifying, that would soon be hers. A local midwife, a kindly yet painfully honest woman, had informed her that she could expect to give birth in less than two months. Her house might be splendid, her husband a potentially excellent father, yet none of it made the future seem anything more than a trap. A trap that she had already agreed to walk into, it seemed.

*          *          *

Cassia lay cosseted within Quintus's bed, pressing her face against the pillow as hard as her strength, sapped by his constant, increasingly abusive behaviour towards her, would allow. The fine fabric had become stiff with dried tears over recent days, and now as she clutched it against her eyes, nose and mouth, she half wished that it would suffocate the life out of her. She had not laid eyes upon the man, her keeper and her lover (at least until he had met that strange child Julia) in several days. Worse than that, she knew in that part of her heart that had always sensed what happened to him that he was missing of his own choice.

            Didius had imparted to her that his master was gone to meet with powerful men, senators most probably, over matters that he would discuss with no one. Neither his loyal manservant nor the mistress he so enjoyed keeping confined in this opulent prison. Cassia had not been quieted, even for the briefest moment, by Didius's kind reassurances that it was simply obligatory for him to keep his political dealings secret. She had not known a second's rest until she had discovered letters in his study, opening the locked drawers with a set of duplicated keys she kept concealed within the seams of her gowns. Letters not from senators – but from royalty.

            Stuffing a handkerchief into her mouth to keep from screaming, she had read the replies to Quintus's no-doubt incessant, needless pestering from a man who had become almost a mythic figure in the minds of the privileged Roman classes. Everyone had heard at some point over that last two decades of the orphaned Prince Lucius Verus, the grandson of Marcus Aurelius and hereditary heir of his mad uncle, Commodus. Some whispered that he had disappeared along with his mother to some foreign island, or even that they had both been kidnapped, and eventually murdered, to protect the superiority of the new sovereigns.

            Then there were those status-seekers who swore that they knew him; that he had retired of choice from public life once it had looked certain, with the ascension of Pertinax and then Septimus Severus to the throne, that he would never himself be Caesar. He had even been quoted, outrageously, some insisted, as calling the position a 'throne of blood' that he would sooner die than accept, even given his superior blood and natural right above all others'. Thoughts of such a young man being in such danger every day of his life, simply because of an accident of birth, had always made Cassia feel ill.

            Holding in her hands singular proof that he truly still existed made her terrified, paired with the knowledge that Quintus had been in contact with him, not only in written correspondence but certainly in person as well. All of those nights when he had avoided her company, and consequently any obligation to tell her where it was he chose to spend those hours, other than sleeping beside her. As much as she had been driven to hate him of late, the thought of him placing himself in any danger, perhaps by committing treason, caused her actual pain and threw her mind in turmoil.

            The two greatest shocks, however, had been yet to come. The few of the letters she could bring herself to read had raised too many questions in her mind to be ignored. The Prince seemed to be replying to some revelation Quintus had made, with utter seriousness, deep surprise and touchingly ardent concern. The revelation, moreover, appeared to relate to a single person; a woman. Care had obviously been taken never to mention her name, and instead employ riddling phrases or, in one case, a single, dreadfully revealing letter: _J._

            Cassia had stuffed the letters straight back into their hiding place in that second. She despised herself, in the most bewildering manner, for never having imagined that the girl would have had some place in these events. She had wasted no time in denouncing Julia as a whore, a threat to her security, and Quintus as a monstrous fool for pursuing her. What, in fact, was she, in view of these discoveries? Could she have somehow reawakened Quintus's interminable and misguided ambition, and could this be why the Prince expressed such interest in her? In a country-bred little girl?

            As she locked the drawer securely again, her hands shaking, her eyes came to rest upon one letter, sealed but as yet unsent, that her former companion had left quite carelessly atop his desk. The seal, as well as the handwriting, was unmistakeably his own. The name upon it, however, made her cry out with further agonised bafflement: _Julia, audaciously written out in full, as if sadistically he had wished for her to see it, and feel the way she did. She may as well never have sought out those letters from the Prince; the dread would not have been lessened. She thought of taking this one away, hiding it with her keys, and simply facing his anger later on. _

            Then she decided, half-heartedly, against it, leaving it where it lay like a weapon potentially able to cause untold suffering. Lying abed each night, including this one, she had wondered at her own sanity in doing so. She had never seen Quintus so that she might confront him, though knew full well that he was in the habit of returning to his house, always when its other inhabitants slept, to collect more of his belongings and then leave again. Perhaps at this moment, he crept around his own home like an intruder, or a ghost. In the morning, Cassia planned to return his study, merely to see for herself that the letter bearing the girl's name would be gone.

*          *          *

The sound of someone knocking quietly against wood reached Julia as she sat up in her bed, tiredness weighing upon her like a heavy cloak, her troubles still steadfastly denying her any rest. At first, she told herself that no one could be knocking at their door so late at night, as even if they were, surely the noise would be louder. If this were a person, they were eerily tentative; almost as if they knew that she would be lying awake, and wanted only her to hear them, and not Marius.

            She looked instinctively toward her husband, relieved to see that he remained undisturbed, with his head turned slightly towards her. To her surprise, she felt a pang of affection for him, for everything about him; down to the way he seemed to watch her and adore her even in his sleep. The knocking continued, becoming slightly more insistent. Easing herself out of bed, groaning inaudibly under the extra weight of her swollen stomach, she steeled herself to face whoever it might be. 

            An icy draught seemed to push her roughly through the villa's darkened passages like a cold, invisible hand. Reaching the door, she caught her breath, though the short walk from her room had hardly exhausted her. 

            "Who's there?" she hissed, pressing her ear to the wood. Nothing could be heard outside, bar a hissing sound, loudening gradually into coherent speech. A vagrant, no doubt, or a slave absconded from a wealthy household. Turning, Julia rested her weight against the door, willing the visitor to leave. 

            "Julia! Please open the door!" the voice came suddenly, loud and clear. Instantly recognisable; an authoritative, audacious tone, the accent upper class and rather impertinent. Not soft and noble like Lucius's; there was only one other gentleman of loftier Roman rank that she knew.

            "Quintus, you must go!" Her fingers crept around the key inside the lock, wanting, against her better judgement, to turn it. Outside, he banged his fists against the door, seeming to make the building shudder with the impact. The night was cold; her instincts demanded that she offer him shelter, or at least welcome him inside, as she had done before, and then ask his business.

            No sooner had she pulled the door an inch out of its frame than he was forcing his way in, his eyes darting in every direction before focusing upon his hostess. A lump formed in her throat as she realised that she barely recognised him. His skin was ashen white and hardly a hair remained on his head; this vision of such advanced age, possibly even approaching death manifesting itself, horrified her. She stepped back, more to distance herself than to be out of his way as he entered her home.

            "You shouldn't be here!" she cried, almost wishing that Marius would wake and save her from this latest mistake she had made. 

            "I did not plan this, Julia, and I apologise…but there is something I must do. It cannot wait any longer." Even as he spoke, he shivered with cold, and appeared so weak that she genuinely feared his collapse and death in front of her eyes. She parted her lips to speak, only to be silenced as he fixed her with bright, wild eyes, suddenly appearing too large for his face and so at odds with his terrifying pallor.

            "What must you do?" she said at length, a dry whisper.

            "I must have you. I cannot, I _will not, live a moment longer without claiming what is rightfully mine. I will start with you, the Princess of the Empire __I discovered! You were my foundling long before you were that bitch handmaiden's. I saw your father slaughtered in the Colosseum, and along with his life disappeared any hope I had of greatness! Whether you were sired by the General or the Caesar, it matters not, as they were both infidels in their hearts. The lady, your mother, was whore to both of them, I know. Never once did she look at me, not the mere Second! When she perished, there was no one left to properly care for you except me. I was not even allowed that privilege."_

            "I'm sorry," Julia sobbed, sinking to the ground, feeling all of a sudden unable to support her own body. "I don't know what you're talking about…"  
            "I'm talking about _you. You're rubbish here, do you know that? In the capital, the lives of the common people mean nothing. As the Empire flounders, nothing matters much anymore except blood, and power. I cannot change it, but I will keep you nonetheless. The Gods have deigned this, can you not see? There is too much of the world as it once was, and should be now, in you and your blood, for us ever to be apart for very long. If you cannot belong to Rome then you __will be mine…"_

            "Leave!" she shrieked, her breath coming in quick, agonising gasps. His words felt like knives as she heard them, and made sense of them even as she feigned ignorance to their meaning. She made to cross the room, never imagining that he would follow her. Before she sensed his closeness, he had hold of her wrists in a bruising grip. She moaned as he twisted her arms savagely behind her back and forced her to the ground so that her back hit the floor with a crack, forcing a scream out of her. "_Quintus! Don't touch me! Oh no…"_

            Stabbing pains cut through her abdomen as her attacker pinned her in place, letting go of her wrists and, amazingly tenderly, placed his hands on either side of her face. She bit his fingers and tried to spit at him, at the same time trying to lift her arms, which felt leaden with pain. He had killed her baby; she swore she had felt its death. Her strength seemed to desert her entirely with this realisation, although Quintus, oddly enough, seemed not to be preparing to hurt her any further.

            "I'm begging you!" She looked at him as resolutely as she could manage, as the shock and torture in her heart began to override that in her body. "Don't do whatever you were thinking of! You've injured me enough…release me and you can leave. I swear I'll tell no one…"

            He groaned, his face falling into an expression of indescribable sorrow, pressing a hand over her lips to cut over any further protestation. His next action silenced her with sheer surprise; he pulled her into a gentle embrace, lifting her arms around his neck as he enfolded her with his own. 

            "I love you," he muttered as she shuddered, wept and bled within his grasp. "I only wanted you to be mine, the way your mother never was. I've betrayed so many people I loved, and now you too…Julia, when you were born, I thought you were nothing but a half-breed and a bastard. But you're a princess, a goddess…nothing less. Don't forget it."

            They were no longer alone. Swift, heavy footsteps hit the stone floor and penetrated their joint reverie only gradually. Quintus did not release her, or even turn his head, until Marius roared and fairly flew at them. Julia scuttled away from the two men as they came instantly to death blows; it seemed, right in front of her.

            She could not stand to watch, yet could not do anything else. Her nightdress, she realised suddenly, was soaked in blood down to her ankles – but not all of it was her own, leaking from where her lost, murdered child lay nestled. Quintus and her husband struggled for only a few moments, flashes of metal catching her eye as they did. Daggers. Both of them were stabbing the life out of one another.

            Quintus could not last long…he was at death's door already. Wasn't he?

            Julia heard her own screams as Marius, gazing at her with grotesquely wide eyes, fell to the floor, the handle of one weapon protruding from his stomach. There he lay, twitching and crying her name. His opponent remained standing.

            As he ran from their house, covered in innocent blood, Julia threw herself down beside her spouse, still screaming, and cradling his face. The door remained open, its hinges clattering in the wind. Marius gazed at his wife as if ready to ask her a question, peering quizzically from her to his wound, and back again.

            "I'm so, so sorry," she wept. "This shouldn't have happened to you, not to you! It should have been me, he meant to claim my life…oh, Marius, don't go, I love you, oh, don't go…"


	25. XXIV

Placing her foot onto a wooden block she had placed next to the stable door, Julia pulled herself up and peered over, to see the newborn foal for the first time. Whispering a greeting to the mother, her beloved mare, she wiped tears away from her eyes. The little thing, its long legs curled up as it lay on its side, peered up at her trustingly, almost smugly. She smiled, wondering if it even recognised her expression as the reassurance and signal of affection it was meant to be. 

            Across the yard, Marius called to her. "Mama!"

            She had told the little boy, not yet three years old, to watch over a litter of puppies while she tended to the larger new arrival. His voice, however, could motivate her to be at his beck and call anytime. She had never been a forceful mother; she readily admitted that her son was spoiled, and had been cosseted and given everything he wanted all of his life to date. The day of his birth, a large, healthy infant already wailing for attention, Julia had prayed fervently, thanking the Gods for sparing her precious baby and vowing always to love and cherish him. She unfailingly had.

            Lucius had brought her the most renowned midwife and physician from the Roman court, both of whom had brought the children of royalty safely into the world. It had pained her to see the physician again, as the man, though he had tried everything possible, had been unable to save her husband's life after his brutal wounding six weeks before. Moreover, she had had to watch in agony as the area was searched for Quintus, though he had never been found, and so never brought to justice. She had done her best to banish his memory, and any fondness she had ever harboured for him, forever.

            Time proved to be a powerful healer, if a very slow one. The villa, now her own property along with Marius's considerable wealth, swarmed with local matrons declaring their friendship and support of the young widow and her child. Lucius visited almost daily; her endlessly kind, oddly secretive noble friend, always with a rich gift and a warm embrace for her. He made no demands of her, even unspoken ones. Sometimes, it seemed, he depended upon her companionship as much as she depended upon his, yet she was never loath to be in his company, even if all they ever did together was sit in silence and watch her son play in the fields.

            Whenever she and the boy were left alone, their friends returned to their own lives, Julia feared almost to think. Her memories, as repressed as she had forced them to be, always lingered in the recesses of her mind, ready to leap to the fore. 

            Watching the foal, and little Marius as he called to her, served as a welcome distraction at this moment in particular. The day had been blessedly languid, with not much work to be taken care of in the villa bar the care of the animals. Julia stepped down from the block, picking up her skirts and hurrying across the yard towards the boy.

            "Mama!" he yelled again. "Why do they not open their eyes? Are they asleep?"

            She smiled and looked into the pile of soft hay where the bitch reclined on her back, while six almost bald little bundles attached themselves to her belly for a drink. "No, they're not asleep, _carus. They're eating, do you see? I fed you a little like that when you were tiny. These were born with their eyes closed; they'll open them and see for the first time soon."_

            Marius nodded his head, gazing approvingly up at her with a pair of eyes almost identical to her own, except for their astonishing, sparkling green colour, unlike anything she had ever seen. His hair was thick and jet black, in addition; in stark contrast with either of his parents'. She wondered at the origin of this colouring. Though he was her own child, Julia's amazement at his astonishing beauty and intelligence never ceased. He was much like her – sadly, he appeared to have inherited few of her late husband's attributes.

            She kissed him and tickled his arms and legs, making him giggle and squirm in her arms, as they stayed to watch the puppies a while longer. As she marched the boy back into the villa soon after, they heard the sounds of a visitor near the front door. Momentarily, as it always did at such moments, Julia's heart seemed to leap into her mouth, choking her with irrational dread. One day, she feared, it might not be so irrational.

            "I think it is Lucius, mama!" Marius chirped. "I think he has come back to give me another present…"

            She held onto his hand gently as he struggled to be released, and run to greet the visitor himself. "Stay here, and be quiet. Even if it is Lucius, you will remember your manners and not pester him for a present. He gives you enough." Patting the pouting child's head, then, she started to make her way through the villa cautiously, her hand at her throat.

            "Who's there?" she called, forcing amiability into her voice. 

A man promptly began to laugh at the other side of the door, the sound instantly stilling the involuntary pounding of her heart. 

Welcoming Lucius inside, she went straight into his open arms, savouring the sense of safety and simple, pure affection she always felt when they embraced. 

            "Where have you been?" she asked, pulling gently away and leading him towards the far end of the villa, beyond which Marius had tottered back out into the yard to play, ever heedless of her wishes, least of all that he stay in one place.

            "I would have visited you more often, my dear, but my house has been a prison of late. Of necessity."

            "What do you mean? You are not in any danger, are you?"

            "I am always in danger," he replied, candidly.

            She halted, again trying to keep her thoughts from running away with her. Lucius had told her many times of the perils of his simply being alive, in Rome, and carrying the royal blood, never hesitating to answer even her most impertinent questions. His confessions, however, never shocked her any less. "That is awful. Why do you not simply leave Rome, and remove yourself from any danger?"

            "Because they would find me, if they did not prevent my flight in the first place. I am watched constantly, often by those I believe are true friends. You will never know how lucky you were to be born outside the walls of a palace, Julia." 

            She sighed indignantly. "You are right, but it is strange you should mention that. I used to imagine that I would have liked nothing better than for some great hand to remove me from my life here, and make me a princess. Lucius, you have no idea how choked I felt by this land and the commonplace existence we all seemed to share. I wanted to run sometimes."

            Lucius eyed her sternly at these words. "You do not feel that way anymore, do you? For it is more foolish than you can know."

            "No, I do not. Not anymore."

            "You are wise." He smiled as they settled at her table. Julia wondered at the sense of serenity Lucius always seemed to carry with him into her home, and at its infectiousness. In his company, she felt buoyed up by a sheer, inexplicable sense of peace he gave to her. She could not worry, when he was here, about the menial tasks upon which the smooth running of her home depended, or of having to watch Marius every second and keeping him out of the many dangers he might toddle into. He made her sincerely believe that nothing could go wrong within her little world.

            "_I am wise? You are the one whose family once ruled an empire, and then was destroyed when you were still a child. You've lived your life in a snake pit, unable to leave and constantly avoiding those who would murder you. You would have made an extraordinary ruler; strong, judicious, tenacious as you are. Shunning violence in favour of thought and rationality. Like your grandfather."_

            When he faced her, Lucius's soft brown eyes were glazed with tears. "Whoever told you about my grandfather?"

            She fought to prevent a sudden chill from making her shiver. "A friend, someone who chanced to educate me when no one else would." 

            "Would you believe, Julia, that sometimes I thanked the Gods for the narrowness of my life in that city? I had protectors, selfish, corrupt men, each one fancying himself a future Regent. But they protected me; I was Antonine – my death would not have been the simple death of a child, but the death of their political selves. The fall from such heights as they had achieved, for them, would have been an indescribable devastation."

            "To think that a man like that laid claim to me." Her voice was barely audible, yet her words made her companion start.

            "When did such a person make a claim to _you?"_

            "When I was five years old. My mother and I lived in poverty somewhere in Rome when he found us. I do not remember the details…I hope I never will. He failed to take me away, and I forgot all about him. When I met with him again, not five years ago, it did not occur to me that I was far from a stranger to him. He asked to marry me soon after, when I was nineteen. It is only lately, after my husband was gone, that nightmares came, of him and of my childhood." She met Lucius's horrified gaze, giving a small smile of intended reassurance. "Quintus."

            Lucius breathed deeply. "I curse the day he threw himself into my path. He was a nuisance; I had bad feelings about his presence from the beginning. I even sent spies after him, once or twice, believing he was one of those who wished me dead. So many letters began to arrive with a courier. I wonder if writing filled all of his days. He declared himself a father to replace the one I barely remembered. And he asked to _marry you…Oh, my dear, I am so sorry. You do not wish to hear this."_

            "Yes I do!" she insisted, taking one of his hands in her own. "I have shed my tears for Marius; I know that save from taking my husband, the Gods have been good to me. I want us to talk now, Lucius, and lay these things to rest!"

            "Very well." He smiled thinly, pushing a stray golden curl behind one of her dainty ears. "If it will help you, I will fulfil the duty I came here, in all honesty, to complete. Oh, there is no need to worry, darling. I realised at once that Quintus was a man ruled by passion and ambition – a hazardous combination as many had proved before him. I had planned to pay him off, discreetly, of course, by seeking for him some minor position of power, and hope that this would quieten him. Then he mentioned you."

            "Lucius…I want you to tell me now, please, why he mentioned me. Why he was ever interested in me." Speaking the words she had longed to, all the time they had known each other, made her tremble inside with conflicting emotion. If he answered her, all the mystery of her life and self would be solved. Yet part of her, housing all of her weakness, did not wish to hear his answer, for sheer terror of what it would be.

            He nodded once, quickly, and leaned forward to kiss her forehead. "Send Marius to bed first. Then I will tell you what must be told at long last."

Her little boy was fast asleep against her shoulder, his afternoon chasing dogs having tired him out more than sufficiently, by the time Julia set him down in his bed. She kissed his dark hair, breathing in the sweet baby fragrance he never seemed to have lost as she wrapped him in a blanket. His tiny eyelids fluttered as he slept and dreamed, never guessing the enormity of what his mother was about to learn. His world, although nobody knew it yet, was never to be disturbed or shattered by the terrible truths and misdeeds of his ancestry. Not once Julia had learned of them, made her peace with them, and finally wiped her memory and her conscience clear of the blots and scars left behind by years of living in ignorance and pain.

*          *          *

_You tell me that Diana raised you as an only child. You were one another's only friend for a very long time, were you not? Then came your stepfather. A good, reputable man, a worthy husband and the most able father you could ever have hoped to have. Except neither of your parents really understood what sort of child you were; you felt a detachment from them that could not be bridged. They loved you with a passion you never truly felt, and that frustrated and disturbed them every bit as much as it hurt you. _

_As a result, they spent what was left of this love on one another. You longed to return to __Rome__, and not knowing how to refuse you or comfort you should they disallow your wish, they separated in order to fulfil it._

_            Yes, and I felt guilty every day! But I could not leave. Antoninus longed to leave left of his own accord, I knew. He only needed an excuse to take me with him._

            _You still feel guilty, I can see, Julia. They made a mistake in raising you alone. A sibling might have helped, but Diana could not provide that; I will tell you why soon. You longed for society and education, which is part of your heritage. So Diana did hint once or twice at your having other family, noble family? The truth is that you are more than noble, and immediately so. That is why I am here, why I found you in the first place._

_            You found Quintus to be your friend and educator. He__ had already found you__, as a child; a child he wished to use to further his ambition. He never reckoned on falling in love with you, once you were a woman grown. For he did love you, honestly and truly. It was to be expected, given where you come from, but he did not think of it at first. He thought only of the power he could obtain, if he first obtained you._

_            Where do I come from, that I could bring him power?_

            _Part of you has always known the answer to that. I guessed as much the first time I saw you; in spite of what you wore and professed to be, a mere country wife, you walked and spoke like the lady you are. Julia, look at me now. Not only are you descended from Marcus Aurelius, as am I, you were also born of the Lady Lucilla. My mother. You are my half-blood sister, and the last, before your son, of our dynasty._

_            When our uncle, Commodus Caesar, was slain in the arena along with the General Maximus, the Empire was almost thrown into chaos, until the accession of Pertinax. Commodus died without an heir; the General, although in actual fact a mere Spanish farmer, was the hero of the common. He was also my personal hero, and the lover of my mother – our__ mother. _

_            She was advised to flee, which she did, immediately after the deaths at the Colosseum. She travelled with only four handmaidens – one of whom, Diana, became the only mother you have known. I imagine my mother took pity upon Diana at first, as she had been forced into the royal service after bearing an illegitimate child by some blackguard. A difficult labour, she was told, caused the infant's death and the fact that she would never give birth again. I believe that her mistress, before you were born, had already deemed to entrust you to Diana. Because, Julia, Lucilla perished almost as soon as you entered this world._

_The General Maximus is not your father, Julia. When I first heard of your existence, I prayed the Gods that you were__ his child. You must trust me that I know now that you are not. Perhaps he is the spiritual father you told me of. I sincerely hope that he is, and that you believe so. Now to the most difficult part of my duty: I have here a letter which Quintus, the last time we met, wished me to give to you. Honour and love dictate that I shall not withhold it, my dear._

_I believe that all this missive contains is what I have just told you, but more than likely with one addition fact – your father's identity. I am begging you, Julia, never to read it. Keep it if you must, if knowing that no more secrets are being kept from you will bring you comfort. I am thinking only of your happiness, my precious sister. Learning who sired you will only bring hurt and shame. All that you must know is that your birth more than likely brought your mother peace after the union which brought about your conception, in which she had no willingness or joy, had taken place._

_Dry your eyes, darling, and burn this letter. I am asking you to, although the choice will be yours. Find happiness in your home, your child, and this beautiful, uncorrupted land. You are wise enough to do so._

*          *          *

For all that she was aware of the passage of time, the remainder of the day may as well have stretched over years. She pottered around the villa, shivering as the sun began to set, occasionally peering into Marius's room in which he remained sleeping, undisturbed. His mother wept as she kneaded dough for the next day's bread, her lips moving in silent prayer for all the blessings she had known, and barely shown any gratitude for. She thought also of the blessings she had never known of until today, of the suffering she had been present to witness and yet forgotten.

            She cried out loud, shaking with grief misunderstood and contained for all of her twenty-three years. She cried until she smiled, and then laughed, hugging herself where Lucius had held her, and touching her face where he had kissed her. A brother, a natural mother and father, she had always had all of them, but only been able to reclaim the first. She resolved, while she was still this young, to treasure every day thoughts of all of them, as well as Diana and Antoninus, her lost husband and her little boy.

            The letter remained on her table; she had not yet touched her. Curiosity to see its contents, even to simply glance at the name of her father, had not even crossed her mind. She dried her eyes, obeying Lucius's first admonition, before moving to carry out his second. The perpetually warm, balmy air of the season had not yet warranted the building of a fire, and so she hurriedly gathered scraps of paper both she and her son had discarded around the villa, as well as clumps of hay and grass Marius had brought in on his little feet.

            A miniature blaze soon sparked and crackled on her stove, the sight filling her with elation as she dangled above it the folded piece of parchment, sealed with a small design in wax. Julia took one long, perfect, righteous breath as she dropped it into the flames. The parchment turned black, curling and succumbing to ashes, setting her free with the final destruction of the memories it evoked and evil, unfit for any person to behold or carry the burden of knowing, which it bore. 

*          *          *

**Author's Note: This story is now complete. Thanks for reading!**


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